


City of Mists and Dreams

by Nivena



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Body Horror, Historical Fantasy, Multi, Science Fiction & Fantasy, gross misuse of slavic folklore, it's okay though because they're aliens, permanent hiatus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 20:59:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11929146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nivena/pseuds/Nivena
Summary: 1872, San Francisco. Underneath an alien citadel, the city of San Francisco has quickly earned its name as the most wretched hive of scum and villainy America has to offer. And yet, whether stranded or fleeing or searching, everyone comes here for something.Unless you’re Allura. She’s just here because she fished a half-drowned ex-samurai with a robot hand out of the water and got a prophecy for her trouble.





	1. The Man on the Raft

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Voltron Big Bang! Art by mevanss.tumblr.com
> 
> (premise comes from http://dreampunk.tumblr.com/post/155051974896/prokopetz-invisiblemelonmoose-prokopetz)
> 
> Updates every other week!

It was a fairly ordinary day if one could ignore the man on the raft. It was as sunny as any other day that summer, without a hint of cloud in the sky. No land for miles, so the ocean was simply a still mirror for the uncontrasted blue above. Barely past the horizon, a metal castle of alien origin hovered benignly, the only promise that the water didn’t stretch on forever.

 

It was ordinary. Peaceful. Except for the man on the raft.

 

Calling it a raft was like calling a tomato a fruit. It was true, but only through the minute technicality of having seeds, and the fact that nobody knew what other category to put it in. Similarly, it was true the man’s raft floated and had planks of wood, but other than that, it was mostly just a disaster.

 

The man himself seemed to be a bit of a disaster as well. He was unconscious, and therefore could not refute this claim, but his appearance said it all. He looked as if he was carved from wood by a drunken nine year old with a kitchen knife, all long flat planes that jangled at sharp angles. His clothes were torn and a faded color that could be classified as “probably used to be black”, too thin to be present for any reason other than modesty. They were arranged in layers around his shoulders, and soaked thoroughly through.

 

The half of the man’s face that wasn’t pressed into the loosely tied wood told a telling story. One that possibly involved a very large bear. A large pink scar ran across the bridge of his nose, and his cheekbones were covered in angry, red scratches, the kind that probably wasn’t helped by being out at sea with no medical aid for who knows how long. Stark white strands spilled over his forehead, contrasting heavily with the rest of his short, inky black hair. He didn’t look Western, with his strange dress and unfamiliar hair, and lack of white facial features.

 

She noticed a glint of what could have been metal, trapped between the raft and the man’s torso. It was probably held in his right hand, which got Allura incredibly curious. What could possibly be so important that it would be the only thing you would take with you to the middle of the Pacific? She really wanted to know.

 

Allura was getting this man on her ship in some way or another.

 

Coran hovered around her nervously. It was not a figure of speech - the man’s head was about to phase through the roof if he didn’t get back down to a respectable two feet off the ground.

 

“Princess,” he said, “are you quite sure? You know, your father always said, you can’t trust every man you come across on the high tide!”

 

“I’m sure,” she assured, making her way through to the ship’s galley. She wasn’t, actually, all that sure. She just disliked admitting defeat.

 

Coran floated doggedly after her, chattering away, which probably should have been irritating after a few hours. Still, Allura never found herself getting tired of Coran’s one-sided conversations. His voice had never changed, no matter how long it had been, which was a bit of a blessing, considering he appeared fake if one squinted. A bit like a picture someone had messed with on Instagram, too bright in places, too dull in others. An illusion that almost looked real. It was almost worse this way, like being tricked.

 

Some days, as hard as it was to admit to even herself, it hurt to look at Coran. But if Allura closed her eyes and just listened to him speak, it was almost as if nobody had died. It was as if she was a young girl again.

 

“Do we still have those Indian spices?” She asked, rooting through the cupboards. San Francisco was a week’s journey away, and she had only planned on her own mouth to feed. Still, Atlantean hospitality was Atlantean hospitality.

 

“Second cupboard to the right,” Coran said. Not to long after she moved out of the way in search of some cinnamon, the drawers next to her flew open. A bag of sugar came flying out, sliding across the countertop like a particularly theatric baseball player approaching home plate. Miraculously, nothing was spilled. Out came the kettle with an accompanying metallic crash, and a few fake silver spoons were yanked out of the cutlery drawer as well, hitting two walls on their way next to the sugar. Coran’s ghost telepathy wasn’t quite as precise as either of them wished it was.

 

The kitchen was quiet as the two waited for the water to boil. It was a comfortable silence, settled and calm. Then, softly, Coran asked Allura:

 

“Do you think-”

 

Whatever he was going to ask was cut off by the distinct scream of someone falling out of their bed.

 

* * *

 

Takashi had one of those sleeps. The kind where you close your eyes for a second and wake up the next, eight hours later. Where you blink and suddenly everything around you changes.

 

For example, he fell asleep while he was hurtling down to earth from a distance of 5,000 feet in the air. He woke up in a bed that was moving slightly. Therefore, it was understandable that he fell out of bed. He was confused and disoriented. He was allowed to fall out of a bed.

 

He lay with his face pressed against the wood-paneled floors, rocked from side to side from what must have been waves outside of a ship, because if he focused he could smell salt-water, so this must have been a ship.

 

“Hello, there!”

 

Also, a disembodied head was peering at him from the floor.

 

Shiro did not yelp, but he did make a noise that many would consider undignified. In his defense, it looked like Coran had clipped through the floor and spoke to him, like something out of Hamlet or a badly rendered videogame.

 

“What the fuck,” Shiro said.

 

Shiro also wasn’t in his normal clothes. He was pretty sure what he was wearing was called a button-up, and he had no idea what adjective would precede pants, but he was wearing strange pants. His sword was gone, and he had a metal hand. Which was, you know, weird. Not weirder than the talking head, but just enough to register.

 

Then a lady burst through the door and everything made even less sense. “Hello,” she said, “I’m Allura. You’re on my ship.”

 

That wasn’t the part that didn’t make sense. Shiro wasn’t, like, a misogynist or anything. It made perfect sense that a woman could be the captain of a ship. It had just been a very strange series of events, and she was a very strange woman in a way that was completely different from the inherent strangeness of having a conversation with what amounted to only 12% of a human, and the clashing strangeness had formed its own brand of strange, and it was all beginning to give Shiro a headache.

 

She was very tall, and probably not just because he was looking up at her from the floor. It seemed that if Shiro stood up, she would clear his height by an inch or two, and he was a pretty tall guy. Her skin was dark, and her hair was white, and it probably should have looked incongruous and somehow it didn’t. That seemed to be the major theme of her entire being. Instead of a normal brown, she had bright lavender eyes, and her ears were pointed in a distinctly unnatural manner, and she had anomalous pink markings around her weird eyes.

 

She dressed even more unusually. It reminded Shiro of the Dutch traders he used to watch when he was younger, with her baggy clothes tucked into each other. They looked like they were nice clothes once, but years of wear and tear had taken their toll, and now they evolved into ‘well-worn and comfortable’. He realised that the clothes were the same kind that he was wearing, and wondered faintly as to who dressed him.

The odd woman was still talking. Belatedly, Shiro looked up at her just as she finished saying, “Would you care for some tea?”

 

“Who are you?”

 

If the lady was strange, she was at the very least hospitable. She at least served tea, even if it was a bit weird, made with **_Tenjiku_ ** spices, and burned a little going down.

 

Shiro found himself a bit ridiculously homesick for good matcha, but that was an unproductive emotion and he decided he would try not feeling it. Yes, the tea was unusual, but it was just one more strange thing on an entire ship full of strange things, and right now, the floating head was taking precedent.

 

There was a man in the kitchen, with the exact face of the dismembered head he had seen before, and he was hovering a few inches off the ground. Shiro tried not to look at him too much. Honestly, who knew if he was going crazy or something, but the last thing he wanted was for a very nice woman captain of a ship hundreds of miles off land to _know_ he was crazy. That would be a uniquely terrible situation.

 

“So, do you remember what happened before you were, you know, floating in the middle of the Pacific?” She asked. She was British, as it turned out. Nothing about her appearance or living quarters indicated that to Shiro, who admittedly didn’t know all that much about the British. It was strange. Aside from the way her accent curled her words, she almost seemed otherworldly, like she didn’t come from or belong to anywhere.

 

“No,” Shiro lied. He realised with a bit of a jolt that he was mirroring Allura’s posture. Unlike her, his shoulders were just a fraction hunched over, his stance just the slightest bit defensive. He straightened up as inconspicuously as he could.

 

“Are you sure?” She pressed. Whenever Allura asked a question, she always tilted her head a bit off to the side. Not too much, and she righted it each time, but it gave the impression that she was always in motion. She talked with her hands too, small vague gestures, just twitches of the fingers. It was pretty admirable how expressive her hands were, considering her crossed arms.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Princess,” said the floating man, “perhaps you should show him to his room?”

 

Allura didn’t show any signs of hearing the man, so that was strike one against his sanity. Though, the more he looked at the… ghost(?), the more strange similarities to Allura he saw. They had the same markings and elf-ears, odd eyes and light hair. The ghost looked almost like a white person if Shiro’s memory of them was to be trusted.

 

That’s where the similarities ended, he supposed. Allura certainly didn’t look white, with her distinctly not-white skin. She did dress European, unlike the ghost. He was in something pastel, and it looked strange and formfitting and… strange. The man was strange. Shiro was glad he’d sorted that out.

 

Allura held the steaming mug up to her face, still not drinking out of it. She asked, carefully, “Do you know who you are?” Delicately. Like she was trying not to offend.

 

“My name is Shirogane Takashi,” he said mechanically. “I served the Tokugawa Shogunate as a samurai on the shihaisho. We lost the Boshin War. I do not have a right hand.”

 

He looked down at the mass of metal and wire where his right hand used to be. “I do not know where this came from,” he lied.

* * *

 

The day passed quietly. Allura informed him that it was a week until they got to the earliest port, and that _yes_ , the clothes he was wearing were hers, and she dressed him, since she was the only other person on the ship.

 

Which, weird. That didn’t seem physically possible. The ship was very gigantic, and very clearly meant for a crew of at least fifty. Also, strike two against Shiro’s sanity, because the ghost was definitely hovering there, right in the corner of his vision. That probably wasn’t good.

 

He idly wondered exactly what kind of ghost the man was. He wasn’t solid: Shiro accidentally stepped on one of his toes, and his foot went right through. So far, he didn’t seem particularly angry, so he was most likely not an onryo. He wasn’t bearing any candy, and he probably hadn’t died delivering a child (though, Shiro added, you never knew), but ubume were probably out of the question.

 

Seeing as this was a ship, it wasn’t too hard to say he may have died at sea. Shiro didn’t remember much more of the legends. He supposed his childhood was lacking, a conclusion he’d come to far too often.

 

But yeah, ghost. Ghost man. Shiro almost wanted to say he wasn’t a yurei, but that would mean he was hallucinating, which wasn’t really a conclusion he wanted to come to.

 

He didn’t look like a ghost at first, but then you saw that there weren’t any shadows.

 

He didn’t seem angry or sad, and aside from his one esoteric comment, he hadn’t spoken. “Princess,” he called Allura. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Was his subconscious trying to tell him that he had a crush on her? There were more subtle ways of doing that.

 

“Shiro, would you mind taking first watch?” asked Allura. The ghost hovered behind her.

 

“Not at all,” he responded, very carefully looking directly at her. Allura sat down across from him. It struck Shiro as odd that a one-man ship would have such a large dining table, before he decided that a one-person table would look even weirder. It was still a little strange, sitting at a table for nine with only one other person for company.

 

“Do you ever get lonely?” he found himself asking the woman across from him. Then his mind caught up to him and he retroactively felt embarrassed. Allura thankfully took it in stride.

 

“Not really,” she said, “but it is a pretty big ship. It was my father’s.”

 

“What happened?” Shiro asked again, because he had forgotten every single manner he had left.

 

She said simply, “He died.”

 

For a few seconds, it was quiet. Shiro knew he should apologise, but the silence was thick and intimidating. Finally, after what felt like too long, he said, “I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be. It was long ago.”

 

“So, you’ve been sailing alone for a long time?”

 

“Mm,” Allura hummed nondescriptly. She turned her head slightly to the side, looking out the window and the uniform waves. She really was very pretty, once Shiro had a while to look at her. She looked… clean. Like if a single person could embody an entity, she would be clean. Perfectly symmetrical, even down to her stray hairs. Even the little marks under her eyes, the ones the ghost had, were painted evenly over her cheekbones.

 

“Those marks,” Shiro said unsubtly. “What do they mean?”

 

She tapped the marks in question. “Oh,” she smiled. “I was born with them. Birthmarks.”

 

Okay. Not strange makeup. Just… birthmarks. Well, if she humoured that question -

 

“Are you Japanese? Pardon the question, it’s just, you speak it well and you don’t look-” Shiro cut himself off before he said something too insensitive.

 

“Oh! I, no. I’ve, ah, I’ve traded with Japanese sailors. Picked it up from there.” She laughed nervously.

 

“Really? You don’t look that old! Not, not that you _are_ old, it’s just-”

 

Allura laughed, so Shiro just decided to quit while he was ahead and stop talking. He found himself reexamining her with a more critical eye. She looked ageless, sure, but to trade with Japanese sailors? That had been a very long time ago. She was lying.

 

Then again, he was too.

 

Night fell slowly, the summer sun reluctant to go. One by one, the stars winked into existence. Shiro had always loved the sky, how fluid and dynamic it was. It was reliable, too. It had a repertoire of colours, and a set of events, and he knew for certain that the sky could turn red, but never green, that it could rain down ice, but never fire. Certainties were hard to come by, and were never as pretty as this one. Death was certain, but it was ugly. The sky though, that was the most beautiful thing humanity had ever been given. Birds didn’t know how lucky they were.

 

First watch apparently entailed “until the stars fill the night”, which was a kind of whimsical impreciseness that seemed utterly unbefitting of Allura. But, orders were orders, so Shiro found a chair and settled on the deck, content to watch the sky dot with stars.

 

He figured that once it became so saturated that the night was half light, he would wake up Allura. It was on its way. The stars always started slow but once that first one appeared, five more rushed to join it. It picked up speed as the night settled around the ocean, tucking itself in the dead stillness of cold air and the puffs of Shiro’s white breath. Like exponential growth.

 

As it got colder, the hurt around his elbow got more pronounced and painful. The ghost had also changed, turning duller, more faded out. He was leaning against the railing, watching Shiro. It almost made him nervous, which was ridiculous, seeing as he was 90% sure the ghost was a figment of his fever dreams. He’d heard of men being driven insane on the sea. This could be it.

 

The ghost had called Allura “Princess.” It was a strange thing to call someone, even in the privacy of his own mind. And what had the man said? “Show him to his rooms?”

 

Allura _had_ later shown him his room, but he doubted it had anything to do with the hallucination. Right across from his own, though she had very carefully made sure not to open her own door or show him in. The ‘Princess’ wasn’t without her own secrets as well. She lied about how she knew Japanese, and Shiro didn’t know anything about her aside from what she told him herself. They were alone out at sea, and all he knew for sure was that she was willing to house him until they got to California.

 

Shiro sighed and got up. His knees protested, having been locked in their position for far too long, and that just set off his arm again, which mostly just led to a lot of pain across his entire body. He shuffled his way through the hallways, down the memorised path to his room. Stopping, he knocked on Allura’s door twice, then waited for the telling noises of someone getting out of bed. Sure enough, he heard a muffled thump and footsteps towards him before the door swung open.

 

“It’s your watch,” he said unnecessarily.

 

Allura smiled, not a trace of sleepy in her face. She was still wearing the clothes she was in that morning. “Thank you, Shiro,” she said.

 

“No problem, Princess.”

 

They both registered exactly what was wrong with that sentence at the very same time. “What did you just call me?” Allura asked to an increasingly embarrassed Shiro.

 

Then the sky turned green and started raining fire and nothing made sense from that point onwards.

* * *

 

* * *

* * *

 

_**Historical References:** _

1\. Shiro describes Allura’s clothes as looking like the Dutch traders he watched as a child. Assuming he is in his mid-20’s, his childhood would pretty firmly take place during Japan’s sakoku, or policy of isolationism. Interestingly enough, despite the pretty firm tone of “isolation”, Japan still traded with many countries, like China and Korea. However, the only European influence allowed was trade with the Netherlands (of all places). It was only allowed at a trading post near Nagasaki, so for the sake of that historical allusion, we’re gonna assume that’s where Shiro grew up.

2\. There’s a reason why I chose tea-making as the centre of the action. Tea has an incredibly long and storied history in Asia, and was even the start of tons of conflicts. Like, legit wars over this leaf water stuff. I’m not kidding. And in the 1100’s, wealthy samurai began to adopt habits of Chinese high society and tea drinking became the centre of their meetings. The tea ceremony quickly became the main way official business was conducted.

3\. On that note, Shiro describes the spices used to make the tea as Tenjiku. This is the historic East Asian name for India! (holy shit do I wish there was an indian character in voltron, JUST to explore indo-japanese relations. also im south asian and i desperately crave that representation.) Tenjiku means Heavenly Abode, and it comes from a very long game of cross-language telephone that started with ‘Indus River’. The two countries have a history of harboring each other’s refugees, and they have an incredibly good relationship, and I will stop right here but if anyone wants to know more about Indo-Japanese relations please ask i have five paragraphs of this stuff.

4\. Shihaisho: Land in Japan that the shogunate directly held. This included Nagasaki, so that’s where Shiro served. Boshin War: also known as the Japanese Revolution because in the late 1800’s revolution was the newest fad. Nagasaki was actually pretty anti-shogunate, but it’s all this one scotsman’s fault.

5\. The ghosts Shiro was trying to classify Coran as: okay at this point please just google Japanese ghosts i can’t do it justice. they have a fucking CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM.

6\. Shiro knows Allura is lying about speaking Japanese because. Isolationism. She couldn’t have traded with Japanese sailors if she was British.


	2. Ghost Armies and Mood Lighting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prophecy is given and Lance and Hunk get into Shenanigans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im rewarding myself for typing up half of the final chapter for this fic by posting way earlier than i meant to guess this won't get a consistent update schedule after all! whoops!
> 
> oh! by the way! if ur on ur computer hover over non-english words to get the translation (lets see if this works)

The world can be separated into two categories of people.

 

There are people who hear strange noises in the middle of the night and dismiss it as the house settling. They see weird shadows walking home at 3AM and decide it’s the trees. Sometimes they might call the police if they see something extremely weird, but they certainly wouldn’t investigate police _sirens_ , especially not in the dead of night.

 

Then of course, there were the dumb assholes that ran outside to poke at whatever fell from the sky. Shiro and Allura fell squarely into that exact classification. On the positive side, these are the kinds of people that get written about. Heroes and what not.

 

Speaking of whatever fell from the sky, currently, the sky was green and blue. It was the wrong kind of blue for sky, the kind of blue that belonged in jellyfish and algae and copper fire. It lit the deck with the unearthly coloring, strangely reminiscent of being underwater. Like pool lights, shimmering in a distinctly fake but not unpleasant way.

 

There were men on the deck. None of them spoke. They looked like they were made of smoke, but whenever the light hit them, it didn't go through like a flashlight through mist. Rather, it lit them from within, leaking bright blue-green from the orifices of their face, rendering them uniquely terrifying for the few seconds before the light passed over them and they were wreathed in shadow again. It was hard to tell if the men had any coloring of their own, too washed out in wavering blues.

 

They were lined up like infantry, like terra cotta soldiers, like men with purpose. Long neat rows of smoke turned human, all arranged around a single figure.

 

He was tall, and though his clothes were unfamiliar to Shiro, they certainly weren't to Allura. The crown on his head, however, had unmistakable significance.

 

Shiro sunk to his knees and performed the most formal bow he knew.

 

He was in the presence of royalty.

* * *

 

"It is nice to finally meet you, Paladin," said the ghost king.

 

Shiro glanced quickly between him and Allura, who was the only other person he knew in this situation seeing as the ghost disappeared somewhere in this mess. She looked shocked, still as a statue. Then, she breathed deeply, and asked the man:

 

"Paladin?"

 

At least, Shiro thought it was a question. He didn't really know Allura that well, but their entire acquaintance had been 85% her asking him questions, so he would hope he could pick out her tone by then.

 

The king tilted his head slightly, just like Allura. He asked, kindly, "Did you not know?"

 

"No, I-" Allura finally met Shiro's eyes for a half second before glancing away. "I suspected. He called me Princess."

 

"I'm sorry," Shiro blurted out. He felt distinctly like he should maybe apologize for that.

 

"Why?" asked the ghost king, suddenly focused completely on Shiro. It was a little unnerving. He was so much more in focus than all the other ghosts. The only other person he'd seen that looked like that was the ghost who followed Allura.

 

"I don't know," Shiro answered honestly. "I am."

 

The ghost king walked forth. There was no click when his feet hit the ground, a fact Shiro's mind had trouble with. It threw all his senses off, and the king was in front of him before he had realized. Shiro stayed in his bow.

 

"You are the Black Paladin. You are entrusted with the power of Voltron, and the well being of my daughter. Destiny has brought the rest of your companions to the port city of San Francisco. You will find them there."

 

Then, he turned on heel and blinked out of existence, taking his ghost army and mood lighting with him.

* * *

 

The kitchen was, on a close inspection unimpeded by shock, surprisingly cluttered. Shiro supposed that was the fault of the ghost man, who was apparently named Coran. It was about as strange a name as Allura.

 

There were pots and pans everywhere, and across the counter top were books in various languages, strewn and stained with abandon. Jars of ingredients lay about in various states of sealed, and something in one of the cabinets was leaking slowly and steadily onto the wood-paneled floors. Speaking of, the floors must have been enchanted or something, because even in his bare feet, Shiro had yet to feel the rough texture that warned of imminent splinters. It was smooth, like walking on stone floor in a temple.

 

It certainly wasn't as clean as a temple. Stained with years of taking beatings from sea-salt air and failed cooking, certain spots were possibly permanently discolored. In places, the wood had warped into small hills.

 

If Allura was to be believed, the ship was over fifty years old. The furniture certainly matched. Scattered around the kitchen were a motley assortment of chairs and tables, each plucked from a different place and era.

 

Allura herself was far older than fifty.

 

"We called ourselves Atlantians, and God had tasked us with keeping the peace. Xe gifted us with magic and power. We could translate for others. We could talk to others. We could even look like others," she began. Shiro didn't miss how her eyes were studiously fixed on the mug of now-cold tea before her.

 

"It worked. It worked for thousands of years. And then, one day, my father created the greatest weapon anyone had ever known. He found five people all over the earth, and gave them part of his power. They were called the Paladins.

 

"Each one had a single realm of control. The Black Paladin, the leader of the five, had dominion over night. Or- not dominion. Understanding. You understand creatures of the night. And, when you understand them, they understand you. They will fight for you.

 

"It was never meant to be a weapon, not at first. But my father was a smart man. He wanted to keep a legacy, to ensure cooperation, because he thought our days were numbered. And he was right. With the last of his power, he ensured his rules. His failsafes. First, the creatures of myth and story are bound to humanity, and must serve when called. Second, custody of the planet must be transferred from the Atlantians to humanity. Finally, nobody may take control of the Earth so long as a human still lives, or the planet will wither and die."

 

Allura choked. She didn't speak for two minutes.

 

"The Galra came. They came in search of a new planet, because they were burning through theirs, and Earth was the closest substitute they could find. And they decimated us. Burned us to the ground. But they were too late. Even if they killed me now, the still wouldn’t be allowed to live on Earth. Even so, my father put me in stasis and asked Coran to watch over me, and even in death, Coran watches over me."

 

"Just doing my job, Princess."

 

“You’ve done so much more than your job. But, where was I? Oh- I woke up fifty-ish years ago. The British were willing to give me a decent job alone on the seas, so I took it. It was easy to switch from piracy to merchantry, and I've been waiting ever since. The Galra haven't done anything, but until I found the Paladins, we've been in stalemate. We know what they need to do. I've been waiting for you."

 

Shiro looked up. "Princess-"

 

"Nobody but Coran has called me Princess in ten thousand years," said Allura.

 

"Okay, _Captain_. What are we going to do next?"

 

Allura smiled as she looked out the window. Right over the horizon lay the malignant grey dot of the metal Galran castle.

 

"Seven days to San Francisco," she said. “Seven days until we find the rest of the paladins.”

* * *

 

The day was the kind of hot that had you sweating through even the most indecent clothing. It was, Lance reflected, the epitome of why some people hated heat. He personally, was more of a warm-weather person himself, but he preferred the “fuzzy blankets and not yet sweating” kind of heat. This, he thought, was just _excessive_ . America was  _showing off_.

 

Cuba didn’t show off. Cuba was fucking perfect, and didn’t have anything to prove, and the heat was almost certainly getting to Lance.

 

He groaned and stretched at his desk. The incomprehensible tax forms he was supposed to be filling out for City Lights Bookstore were unsalvageable and crumpled, converted instead to an inefficient fan. Too damn hot for doing anything. Even the wrist movements to keep his fan going were too much effort.

 

Everybody sane stayed home and didn’t go shopping today, except Hunk. It gave the place a slightly eerie feel, of too many shelves and sharp corners, and not enough people filling in the spaces. Bookstores tended to have an air of elitism to them, the cold academic aura of too many books with no humans to soften the edges. No humans, except for Lance and Hunk.

 

Because, of course, Hunk was there. Curled in the corner with the book he certainly wasn’t going to buy, the other boy was hurriedly skipping through the cleanly printed pages as if on an urgent mission. It was probably mostly for show anyways - the kid had been there for months, and nothing had changed.

 

“Hey, Hunk! Hey, hey Hunk!” Lance said, shifting in his seat and - ugh - feeling his shirt stick to his back with sweat. He might as well engage in conversation while he was in the middle of not doing anything.

 

“Hm,” Hunk replied noncommittally, nearly tearing a page from flipping by it so fast. Lance winced.

 

“It’s hooooooot,” he whined, slumping onto his desk.

 

At that, Hunk looked up. “Prop open the other window,” he offered, then looked back down to his _riveting_ book on 16th century plagues.

 

“I already opened ooooooone,” he whined. “What’s another one gonna doooooo? Too much effoooooort.”

 

“It’ll create an air current between two opened points and allow for cross ventilation.”

 

“What.”

 

Hunk blushed - an amazing feat through his dark skin. “It’s just some engineering and physics stuff I read somewhere. Just try it?”

 

Lance dutifully tried it.

 

“Huh,” he remarked as a breeze picked up in the room. “You’re pretty smart, Hunk.”

 

Hunk’s cheeks took on a red tinge. “It’s not that great. What _would_ be smart would be if I could finally figure out this dumb disease stuff.”

 

“Studying to be a doctor, huh?” Lance teased.

  
“Yes,” Hunk replied.

* * *

 

Shiro had tripped over nothing seven separate times over the course of one day. Allura had gotten completely over the “we barely know each other” awkwardness, just in time to unabashedly laugh at his pain.

 

"Oh, you just haven't got your sea legs yet! Don't worry, it'll come!" Coran bubbled cheerfully, ghost-perched on the railing near where Shiro had stumbled and leaned on in an attempt not to fall overboard. He still wasn’t sure if he was going to mark that down as a failure, or just a pyrrhic victory.

 

“Soon, you’ll be walking normal in no time!”

 

"Thanks," he muttered, which in this case meant something a bit more along the lines of _death is coming for me and I have accepted my fate_.

 

Shiro was not a fan of sea travel.

* * *

 

 

Lance narrowed his eyes, watching out the window like a hawk with their prey.

 

“There he is, Hunk,” he intoned dramatically at his apathetic audience. “My arch nemesis.”

 

“Does he know that?” Hunk asked, placidly flipping the page.

 

“No.”

 

Keith Kogane was standing outside the rival bookshop, _Books Inc._ , doing… something. He was doing something, and it was sketchy. He didn’t look around furtively or anything, but Lance knew the guy, and Lance knew he was up to something. He looked calm, but that didn’t mean shit. Kogane was always calm the way black licorice was always sweet. It was undeniably _sweet_ , but in a peculiar and unsettling way that nobody could ever quite describe. It gave the impression of being faked, that it would disappear in an instant and leave you with nothing but a slightly minty bitterness in your mouth.

 

In simpler words: he didn’t talk much, always scowled, and was Asian, so white people and Lance were suspicious of him.

 

In Lance’s defense, his misgivings weren’t racist in nature. He’d just seen the guy talk to aliens a few times, and that kinda weirded him out.

 

Speaking of aliens: “Hey, Hunk, does it look like he’s talking to himself?”

 

Hunk didn’t look up from his book. “No.”

 

No, but, as Lance looked closer through the slightly dirty windows, it did seem like Keith was talking to _someone_ . There was a distinction between talking to yourself, and talking to _someone_. People were freer in facial expression and tone when they talked to themselves. They scrunched up their faces more than was socially acceptable. Their voices modulated as much as they wanted to. Lance knew this, because his littlest sister liked to read her books aloud to herself. She didn’t do it to impress anyone else, and she didn’t react to anything but herself.

 

Keith was reacting. Keith wasn’t making funny scrunched up faces. Keith wasn’t talking to himself at all.

 

He was talking to _someone_ Lance couldn’t see, and that was strangest of all, because the entire narrow street between the stores was empty and devoid of all life.

* * *

 

“Allura,” Shiro said, “are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

 

“Why wouldn’t I?” She asked, brandishing a screwdriver and a magnifying glass. In front of her were several parts of Shiro’s hand, presumably non-essential.

 

“I can’t feel my pinky finger.”

 

“Oh. That… that might be a problem.”

 

The metal hand made a slight humming noise as Shiro flexed it again, and sure enough, the pinky stayed jammed in its position.

 

Now that the metal covering was mostly off, the actual hand underneath peeked through. The prosthetic seemed to have been built around a real human hand, or at least something meant to resemble the skeleton of Shiro's fist. He couldn't decide which option was creepier.

 

The bones were held together, not by tendon and muscle, but thick wires of metal. They were all manner of colours, bronze and gold and grey, and they didn't so much shimmer in the light as they did glint dully, as if someone had liquidized or oozified a grey filter and coated it on the hand. Above the bare bones ran another skeleton, made of a thick copper-esque material. It was strangely reminiscent of the rib wires of an umbrella, spiky-sharp, simple, and wholly responsible for all movement. The rods were separated and attached to thick bronze studs at each knuckle, allowing all his fingers a normal, human range of movement. All except the one over his pinky, which was sticking out at a bit of an odd angle.

 

“Oh dear,” Coran started to fret. “I do hope the thaumaturgical accelerants haven’t blown!”

 

Both Allura and Shiro ignored him for the moment. Shiro furrowed his eyebrows, curiously examining his hand. Using his much more carbon-based left hand, he tried to manually unstick the metal finger.

 

His hand beeped out a loud warning noise, startling all three occupants of the table. “Oh my,” Coran said faintly.

 

“If nothing else, it would be very surprising in battle,” Allura said, evidently amused.

 

“Do you think you can magic it back together?” Shiro asked, still fiddling with his hand. Allura slapped him away after the third warning beep. She would swear before her Lords, the blaring beep got noisier with each accidental jam.

 

“No, because magic doesn’t work like that. I can, however, screwdriver it back together.”

 

She picked up her tool and began poking anew at the behemoth of wires.

* * *

 

At some point a few minutes ago, a man had come to relieve Lance of his duties and boot Hunk out of the store for sampling but not buying. Lance had utter conviction that his boss has been truly destined by God to be a soldier in some army or another, and some accident of fate or another had left him in charge of a bookstore. Accident of fate or no, Iverson both hated his job and took it _very_ seriously.

 

So, Lance got an hour to hang around and stalk stake out the rival bookshop across the street. Keith was let off work at six, which seemed like an eternity away to the two bored teens sitting out front.

 

“This is so dumb,” Hunk muttered, sinking lower in his wooden chair. “I should be studying right now, not encouraging your dumb choices in life.”

 

Lance wholeheartedly disagreed with that sentiment. Hunk studied _entirely_ too much.

 

“Lance, we’re staking out a _bookshop_ , harassing some poor kid who doesn’t even _know you_ , and wasting an hour in the sun during summer, because you think he’s sketchy.”

 

Well, when one put it that way…

 

“Fine, we can move to the shade. There’s an alcove in the alley right there,” Lance got to his feet, maneuvering his way to the side of the building with the easy confidence of someone who’d lived in the city their whole life.

 

In actuality, Lance had arrived in San Francisco about six months before Hunk, albeit much less memorably. Lance was just one of the many people taken by horseback across the vast expanse of America. It had been months of journeying from the New York port his family had seen him off at, compared to the two and a half weeks of sailing Hunk did from Moloka’i to the port city. However, arriving at the docks in a ship built with your own two hands certainly had _style_.

 

Hunk, it seemed, was full of that style. Lance had always admired how determined Hunk was, in stunning contrast to his own directionless free-fall through life. Hunk had goals. Hunk wanted to know things. Hunk was going to be an engineer, or a doctor, or something amazing just like that.

 

Lance’s goals in life were more like ‘figure out what’s up with that weird Korean kid from the other bookstore’.

 

Speaking of, Kogane was leaving. He shut the door behind him softly, before abruptly striding into the exact alleyway Lance and Hunk were hiding in. Immediately, they stood stock still.

 

If they had been scared before, it went doubly so when a man materialised at the other end of the alleyway. It seemed as if the winds themselves tied together to form him, knotting themselves into the shape of a man in a thick bodysuit. He (?) was tall and terribly thin, with the oddest outline, like someone had taken his skeleton as he was being made and shifted the bones just the slightest bit. His arms started a little too far down for his shoulders to allow. His hips were just the slightest bit dented in. His spine was a touch too long. His skin was purple and his eyes were yellow.

 

Also, his face looked like someone had sewn a pug’s face on and stretched it to fit the confines of an adult human male’s. That was a bit disturbing too.

 

The alien man shuffled forward, passing Lance and Hunk without so much as a glance. Maybe he had really bad eyesight, ‘cause of his yellow eyes? Lance would have to ask Hunk about that, if they, you know, survived the next five minutes.

 

He moved with more grace than Lance had thought he would have, and it seemed there were muscles on his frame that accounted for the bone structure - they stood out in thick cords as he walked. It looked like a vine had grown inside him, throttling his skeleton.

 

" _ Siśu _," it greeted Keith.

 

"Asshole," he shot back.

 

The alien man snarled slightly, revealing unkempt black snaggleteeth. Black teeth, purple skin, yellow eyes. A stunningly scary palette. Whatever god made him had taken color theory in college.

 

"The venerable and eternal _ Dainee _ Hagaar, right hand to the Lord, has tasked you, _ Siśu _. A woman will come to the docks in three days. She will be beautiful, and she will call to you."

 

“That’s dumb,” Keith snorted derisively, which broke the air of mysticism that the alien man had been carefully cultivating. He glared, and kept going.

 

"Sneak onto her ship, rob her of her diamonds. That is all."

 

The alien vanished the same way he came, exploding into the wind right in front of Kogane's face.

 

"Jackass," he muttered. Then his eyes flicked over to the two other occupants of the alley. They may have widened, but Lance wasn't too sure because he sort of stopped thinking after a knife was thrust in his face.

 

More specifically, it was held to his neck. Again, Lance wasn't thinking clearly. It was also curved fancily and had a weird design at the end, and came out of nowhere, which was kind of all he noticed about it.

 

" _What_ ," Keith hissed in a way that didn't seem particularly natural, " _did you see_?"

 

"Nothing!" Hunk yelled at the exact time Lance said, "Everything."

 

There was a long pause. Hunk felt his anxiety attack coming.

 

Then, Keith flicked his wrist. His knife cut a thin scratch into the side of Lance's neck, blood beading up immediately. He drew it up, settling it against the side of Lance's face. The pointy bit was a bit too close to Lance's left eye for both his and Hunk's liking.

 

"Keep your nose out of my business if you want it on your face like it belongs."

 

Parting with that stunning bit of dialogue ripped from an 80’s action film, Kogane shoved Lance at Hunk and turned, slipping his knife back into his sleeve as he left the alley.

 

Lance carefully removed Hunk's clenched fists from his clothing, shouting after Keith, "That line is so cliche, Victor Hugo wants it back!"

 

"Lance, let's just leave this alone," Hunk said in a voice of reason that was about two octaves too high. Lance definitely wasn’t going to leave this alone

 

"But now I'm curious!" He whined.

 

"We are going to die. There's a scary purple man who is going to eat and kill us. We are _so_ dead."

* * *

 

The castle had been steadily becoming clearer the further into their voyage they got. It almost served as a marker, how close they were. You didn't strike a _borobaagh_ until you could see the whites of its eyes, and you didn't dock in San Francisco until you could pick out the thorns on the castle's spire.

 

It had been years upon years, thousands of them, since she'd seen this castle. And yet, she knew. She knew, even without consulting her starmaps and sextants, that they were a day away now. She knew with absolute certainty, the second she could see the malignant purple of the apse, read the carved designs of the turrets, smell the stink of Galran magic, there wouldn't be any stopping this. There wouldn't be any more aimless wandering of the seas. There wouldn't be any more biding her time. The prophecy would begin the second they stepped into the city, and there wouldn't be any stopping it.

 

She heard Shiro step out onto the deck, a soft shuffle of feet still unused to its own gait. He still had no practice with his own hand, turning what used to be a soldier's walk into an ungainly struggle to stay upright.

 

Speaking of his hand, he had fitted the metal encasing over it again. The bones were covered completely by the black-armor gauntlet he had come with. It added another few pounds to the total, but the alternative was letting the sharp metal framework of the mechanical component catch on every piece of cloth he had on, which was the much less dignified option. The covering was especially helpful, considering Shiro's brilliant disguise involved keeping his hands covered by thick wool gloves. Gloves in a California summer would draw only marginally fewer questions than Shiro's unusual prosthetic, but Allura really didn't have any better ideas.

 

He came shuffling forward, then leaned both his hands heavily on the railing.

 

They stood together in silence for a bit before Shiro opened with, "I've never been outside Japan before."

 

Allura leaned against the railing as well, mirroring his position. "Well, I haven't been to San Francisco in ten thousand years. We can be clueless together."

 

Shiro snorted when he laughed, and it utterly ruined the aura of serenity and calm he'd attempted to keep. It was infectious, and Allura found herself giggling a bit herself. She noticed Coran out of the corner of her eye, smiling a bit fondly. He broke eye contact and looked back at the castle.

 

"Princess," he said softly. Allura understood.

 

"Coran," she said back, "I'm not scared."

 

It was Shiro's turn to watch from the side, quiet but present. "They took a lot from us," Coran said, something like regret in his voice. "They took us all." They took your father.

 

"Not all," Allura said. "And they won't take Earth."

 

"We'll get justice, Coran," Shiro said, conviction in his voice. "Your people deserve it. The Galra deserve it."

 

They stood together and watched the sun set behind the citadel.

* * *

 

 **Keith Kogane was standing outside the rival bookshop,** **_Books Inc._ **

Books Inc. is the oldest bookstore in the West, having been opened in 1851. It’s a chain now. I’ve been kicked out of one of them before! Multiple times! (city lights, lance’s bookstore, actually opens for the first time 100 years after this fic takes place. if you have an issue with that, i’m very sorry. it’s a pretty bookstore tho.)

 

শিশু - Sisu.

A Bengali word, meaning "infant". Not particularly derogatory.

 

**_Dainee_ **

Also Bengali. Means "witch", and fittingly enough, it was believed that they kidnapped children and killed them, sucking their blood to live for hundreds of years. Very much a thing women in Bengali villages were accused of, especially if they knew any witchcraft. i really cant wait until the chapters involving haggar bc. listen. i know so much abt bengali ghosts and witches i n e e d  to talk about tis

 

**_borobaagh_ **

bengali! "large tiger", though i'm sure there's some terrifying altean equivalent.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was almost entirely written out before we even got a season 2 and it fuckin shows man. for the record i didn't know SHIT about haggar's real backstory and im too lazy to change this all for her.


	3. Fuck Subtle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allura and Shiro dock at San Francisco; meanwhile, Keith starts his mission and Pidge is just... sort of... there?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i added footnotes this time! and one translation, hover to see the english! (for mobile users, all the historical facts are at the end again!)
> 
> also, please remember to leave a review! i'm getting a lil discouraged w how much effort i pour into this versus what i get back out, yanno? i'm so easily made happy tho, literally anything would make my day!

The docks of San Francisco greeted all incoming merchants with a taste of the worst the city had to offer. The stench of human shit and sweat formed an impervious shell of smell, expanding over the harbor like a miasma of disgusting. It was so thick, Allura swore it even tinted the air.

 

The noise greeted her second. It was an angry buzz of babel, indistinct sound and voice. The very definition of ‘din’.

 

Shiro seemed to go a bit pale, watching it. “I’ve never seen this many people in one place,” he admitted, eyes flicking from one grimy face on the shore to another. There were hundreds of people, packed so close together that as they bustled and hurried, it gave the appearance on one large, writhing mass. She dreaded joining them.

 

Coran flickered next to her, watching the crowd worriedly. She knew, because whenever Coran was worried, he twirled his stupid mustache.

 

“By any chance,” Allura said innocently, “can you sense them? The other paladins?”

 

Shiro looked at her worriedly. “No, should I?”

 

“How should I know? Isn’t this usually how it works?”

 

“How should _I_ know!? I can’t feel anyone! Humans can’t just _sense_ other humans.”

 

“You _can’t_?”

 

“Allura, how long have you lived amongst us?”

 

Allura sighed and looked down at the crowd. “Well, we might as well sell our wares. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll show up to buy some tea and swear their allegiance,” she said in the most defeatist optimism Shiro had heard to date.

 

“Maybe,” Shiro agreed.

* * *

 

It was almost worse, somehow, to be off the ship. There was the phantom sensation of rocking waves, even on solid ground. Shiro found this all distinctly unfair.

 

He must have looked ridiculous, swaying like a drunk as he walked. It was a sharp contrast to Allura, who was far to graceful for someone who spent their immortal life on a boat, and Coran, who floated everywhere like he was wearing Heelies under his robes.

 

It didn’t help that people were staring. Or pointing. It was pretty distinctly not helping, really. It was also really dramatic, like the uneasy few minutes in a movie building up to the action. Shiro would appreciate the masterful tension more if it wasn’t happening to him.

 

“What’s wrong?” He asked Allura quietly, because Allura seemed like the kind of worldly princess who would know why all the white people were acting weird.

 

“They think you’re Chinese. These people don’t like the Chinese,” She explained.

 

“But I don’t look Chinese at all?”

 

“They think I’m black, and I’m not even human. People are strange.”

 

“That’s fair.”

 

Racism aside, the city was nothing like anything Shiro had ever seen before. The streets were dirty and neatly laid out in a grid, with deep indents scored into what Allura called ‘asphalt’. He briefly wondered what they were _for_ , until a loud honk and beep quickly answered his question for him.

 

Allura leaned over and whispered, “cable car,” which Shiro understood as individual words, but could not possibly figure out what they could be doing together in a phrase. He could see where the name came from, though. It did look a bit like a car, if cars didn’t have sides. It was attached at another end to what Shiro could only describe as a box on wheels, three square windows cut into the sides above the logo that proclaimed _CLAY SHILL RAILROAD COMPANY, NO 12[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Street_Hill_Railroad)_. They offered slight glimpses into the inside of the car, or at least the snatches of the tops of wealthy people’s hats that the three saw before the cables dragging the car along tugged it away.

 

“They come through every few hours,” Coran informed as the three continues to trudge along the sidewalk. "New York’s thinking of getting them too.”[2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11929146/chapters/27304026#chapter_3_endnotes)

 

“Hm,” Shiro hummed noncommittally, watching the street fill back up with carriages and horseback riders and the odd personal automobile. The streets weren’t all too busy, per se, quieting down in the absence of the cable car. Most people got around on foot like them anyhow.

 

They forged deeper and deeper into the city, and the further they moved from the ports, the more the buildings changed. They were still alien and new, but in a different way now. The buildings around Fisherman’s Wharf and the port were all muddy red brick, worn and weathered by harsh sea air. They were tall, three stories in places, with archaic arches laid in painstakingly through the thick rectangular bricks. Ornate decorations, and clearly a moneyed city. “Gold to the north,” Allura explained, “and silver mines in the east.”

 

Further into the city, there was less mudbrick and more wood and glass. The buildings looked less impersonal and cold, less austere and sea-hardened, and more homey. More warm and inviting. They looked more like places one could live in, whereas the buildings by the port gave the impression of places of business, empty at all hours besides 9-5.

 

It was all brown-brown now, sepia and wood and oak tones blending into one another. The roads went up and down in steep hills, and the houses reflected that with slanted walls and floors. The buildings were still tall, but more squished together in a way. There was no fancy brickwork or arches, but rather the cement-wood-glass-storefront hodgepodge that was the city’s best foot forwards.

 

Shiro liked it.

 

He also noticed that as they kept moving in the direction Allura was taking them, the assorted apartments and houses began to give way to even more shops and stands. There was the hints of a crowd-conversation, that black buzz of pure noise that every gathering of humans produced, at the end of the street. Suddenly, Allura stopped.

 

“Welcome to the market, boys.”

* * *

Pidge really wished she could hate the market.

 

 

The market was large, bustling, and specifically designed to be an introvert's nightmare. Shopkeepers and street merchants bleated out various calls, like tropical birds hoping to attract customers. The streets were paved in pale, dusty cobblestone, swarmed with people. Lanterns and lamps stood around, empty and useless in the face of the sun. Languages mixed in the air, heavy Russian with angry English with fast Spanish. Lightly clothed people pushed and shoved under the shadows the stalls and buildings provided. It was hostile; it was friendly; it was, above all, loud. A perfect place to hide.

 

All manners of lowlifes thought so as well. Pidge figured San Francisco wouldn't be San Francisco without thieves in the shadows. The wretched hive of scum and villainy that was the San Francisco underbelly was certainly part of the city's charm. The much younger Irish kids hanging around trying to look tough on the other hand, not so much[3](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11929146/chapters/27304026#chapter_3_endnotes). The slurs and aggressive jibes were very much unappreciated.

 

A dog walked by, collarless and mangy, missing clumps of hair in a few places. It was almost a perfect metaphor for Pidge herself, similarly dust covered and homeless. She didn't want to even guess at the state of her hair underneath her scarf. She made good money selling inventions and alchemic potions relabeled with the word "tonic" attached, but she was freelance and fifteen and British-Lebanese Muslim, and none of those things were much good for getting work. Or a home.

 

So there she lay, sitting on a curb watching dogs and horses and people go by, selling their wares under the shadow of a great metal castle.

 

You could tell which of the people were tourists and which were natives - the San Franciscans didn't look up anymore. She did, though. In a detached way, the castle was sort of beautiful, the way the spires of metal connected in ways that were hopelessly, incomprehensibly, and thoroughly alien. Walls of metal twined in hard light formed a spherical base, upon which the rest of the citadel rested.

 

In the seams and 'cracks' of the material, faint purple light glowed from inside. The metal itself was a dulled grey, glinting harshly in the sunlight. It seemed to be made of separately floating pieces, with four long turrets connected through walls made of twisted strands of metal and light, converged around a single raised platform. Shiro didn’t know, because he’d never been outside Japan in his life, but the machinations of his wrist were an almost exact replica of the walls of the metal castle above San Francisco.

 

During the rare thunderstorm, it was said that one could see lightning bouncing around the glowing tops of the castle, gathering at the centre. Pidge thought that was bullshit, mostly because the tops of the castle pierced far past the clouds on most days.

 

The dog whined at a shopkeeper, abruptly pulling Pidge from her thoughts. It was begging for a piece of meat, skewered on the vendor's sticks for human consumption. The man behind the counter, a heavyset Russian guy, considered for a second. Pidge fervently hoped the man would take pity on the dog, then took a step back and asked herself why exactly she was so invested. The power of identifying with someone, she decided.

 

Then she looked slightly to the left and froze in her seat.

 

The woman was beautiful, that much was evident. Tall and dark-skinned, with long white hair and an incongruously youthful face, she was being followed by a ghost. Also, a man who definitely looked like he'd attract the eye of the Irish kids, and not in a good way. His features blared ‘foreigner', even if he was dressed like an American.

 

She was a little more focused on the ghost, though. Turning, she got up and walked to the nearest vendor.

 

"Can you break a ten? I'll buy a piece of coal if you want," She asked, offering the last of the pay from that old man who'd wanted hair strengthening tonic. Retrieving her stack of ones and the piece of coal, she retreated back into the alleyway and laid it all out **.**

 

"Vincent!" She called, slapping the money down. A small cobalt blue flame sprung into existence over the coal.

 

"I got a job for you. Tail those two over there."

* * *

 

Keith disliked the docks with the sort of fervent tenacity that came from having really bad memories of a place. That, coupled with the disgusting smell, guaranteed that his entire stay in San Francisco was spent well away from the harbor.

 

Yet, here he was, huddled unhappily on one end of the pier at ass-o-clock in the morning. Sure, the afternoons were stroke-inducingly warm, but early enough in a summer day, the wind still carried the faintest promise of frost. The morning heavens over the bay was eternally a drizzling grey, the kind of smudgy skies that brought out the color saturation in everything else on earth. It was almost comforting, the knowledge that no matter what happened, that small pocket of the world would remain forever about to rain. Keith would appreciate it more if windchill wasn’t such a bitch.

 

The ships seemed to share his sentiment. They stood along the wharf in even berths, like sentries at a castle, and every time a particularly strong enough gust blew through, he would huddle further into his jacket as each ship rocked in place. Their once white sails flapped around helplessly in the gales, barely tied down to their masts. It was all very dramatic.

 

_A woman will come to the docks in three days. She will be beautiful, and she will call to you._

 

Whatever the fuck that meant. Keith really wished the Dainee was less poetic and more to the point. The way he figured, the Galra empire might actually get something done if they weren’t so busy trying to puzzle through their glorified fortune-teller’s cookies.

 

He also really wished the prophecies were a little more accurate. Three days were great and all, but he’d been here since early morning, and there was still no sign of this beautiful woman. Or anybody else, for that matter. It seemed like it was just another boring day at the docks.

 

Keith briefly entertained the thought of Dainee Hagaar being wrong. He thought that every time he was sent on one of her quests, and every time, he was wrong. Still, he argued every time, maybe this is the day. First time for everything.

 

At that point, an older man walked up to Keith. He seemed like a dock worker, or at least a sailor who was helping out. “Hey, kid. Run along.”

 

“Can’t,” Keith said, leaning back on his hands. “Got a job,” he explained, because technically that was true.

 

The man grunted something like the monosyllabic version of “this is not my problem,” and left. Keith went back to angsting at the quay.

 

He wondered if he’d see the kid from the other bookstore today. Him and his friend, would they tell anyone what they saw?

 

Keith felt anxious all over again, and it was worse now because there wasn’t anything to do except _worry_. That seemed to be the defining feature of the kid from the other bookstore. He brought out the sweaty-nervous-can’t-talk-so-now-i-won’t-talk anxiety in Keith. He was loud, bombastic, and way too willing to yell, which was everything Keith was not and also didn’t appreciate. Also, he had a weird face. It looked like it was too narrow and long to be very expressive, so he just made up for that fact by being even more expressive. It was weird, and the freckles probably helped. Keith had it on good authority that freckles added character.

 

Sometimes he wondered what was up with the kid. They saw each other every single day, for eight hours at their respective bookstores across the street, and then they both left to lead the rest of their respective lives. Keith was curious if they had similar ones. They were about the same age if appearances were any indication, and clearly they worked similar jobs.

 

Was Lance an immigrant as well? Did he have family in the city? Did he have other friends besides the kid from the bookstore? Did he like his life in the city? What did he do for fun?

 

Could he see ghosts too?

 

Sometimes, Keith thought it was wishful thinking. He thought he was so desperate for someone else like him that he blew small things out of proportion enough to justify his own theories. But- he’d seen Lance’s stare linger too often in what should be empty spaces. Seen him make eye contact with dead men.

 

What was it called when one made up evidence to fit a conclusion? Inference-observation confusion?

 

He was dragged from his thoughts when the same man who bothered him before came running across the dock. Blinking, Keith checked his pocket watch. 1:15. Lunch break.

 

“What’s going on?” Keith called to the man on the off chance he’d respond.

 

“Unexpected docking,” The man yelled over his shoulder.

 

_Oh thank god._

* * *

 

Sometimes, Keith really wished his life was easier. If not easier, could it at least be a little less dumb?

 

Here he was, sneaking aboard a strange woman’s ship looking for her diamonds because the alien witch he was contracted to said so.

 

Helpfully, the woman’s ship was fucking massive. Like, ridiculously, unrealistically massive.

 

Maybe, Keith thought, if he searched one room at a time, he’d get done in two weeks. Maybe, he also thought, he would wake up and this would all be a weird-ass dream, and he’d still be in father’s home in 

“ _ Hanyang _”

.

 

After the third unsuccessful ransacked room, Keith gave up trying to put things back in their original places and figured it would probably be better to just solve his problems with magic. If the _Dainee Hagaar_ could do it, so could he.

 

He knelt down in the middle of the kitchen and rapped his knuckles a few times, attempting to whistle in tune.

 

(He couldn’t. Keith couldn’t hold a tune to save his life. What really happened was just a godawful cacophony that could maybe pass for a summoning ritual.)

 

After a half minute of semi-rhythmic pounding and extremely arrhythmic whistling, the beat continued past Keith’s own hands. Slowly, he wound down his ritual, resting his closed fists on the floor and bending his head in deference. He closed his eyes and listened to the tapping continue, building up into a crescendo of phantom pounding against the walls of unoccupied room and fervent whistling from someone who’s voice was higher than Keith’s and feverish whistling from someone who’s voice was lower than Keith’s and then, much faster and more abruptly that it had started, it ended. Keith smiled.

 

“Good afternoon, _Jiniri_.”

 

Looking down at him, supremely unamused, was what looked like a little red spinosaurus with bat wings. It would have been scary, if not for the fact that it was thoroughly chained and muzzled by what seemed like delicately filigreed golden chains. Delicate chains that were perfectly capable of keeping a furious _ifriti_ from destroying the entire pier in a fit of irritated fire. Keith really loved the chains, because it let him be a little shit to creatures that could kill him. Like this one.

 

“How has your day been?” he continued, shaking out his hands because they were cramping and also slightly on fire. Summoning an ifriti required forming it out of a smokeless flame, which was poetic but also very inconvenient. Keith needed a new pair of fingerless gloves now. “Mine’s been pretty good, except my boss wants me to find this thing and it’s really hard.”

 

The ifriti snorted, like horses did sometimes. Horses didn’t like Keith, and neither did ifriti.

 

“So like, how about we work out a deal. Quid pro quo. Scratch me back, whatever. I’ll loosen your chains - for an hour, don’t get any ideas - I’ll loosen your chains and let you go free in a cemetery. As many bones to feed on as you want-”

 

The ifriti suddenly crowed, loud and drawn out.

 

“IF, _if_ , you find a diamond on this ship,” Keith shouted over it. Then, he was almost knocked flat on his back as the mythic creature tore through the ship like a cat when it saw the backyard door open. He was granted a few seconds reprieve before the actual mythical beast from hell came back with two crystals in the little bit of its jaw it could still open and dropped them in his lap. Like a puppy.

 

“Well,” he said. “A deal’s a deal.”

 

The ifriti vanished the literal second he said the words, probably because that was the magical equivalent of signing a contract in blood or some shit. He didn’t know. It was gone, he had his dumb diamonds, a cemetery in the city was probably going to get ransacked, and everyone came away happy.

 

It was way too perfect, so of course that was when he heard another set of footsteps outside the door.

* * *

 

A very long time ago, someone famous said that humans rarely looked up. They said this in a manner that seemed almost to fault humans, to say ‘be more aware of your surroundings’. Keith would like dearly to personally find that man and fight them.

 

Humans never looked up because they never built any structures or methods of getting to the up place in the first place. They didn’t need to look up because it was _physically impossible_ to get up there anyways, and Keith was so pissed because this seemed like amazing advice, get up high so nobody will ever notice you, but in practice it just turned out to be utterly _useless_. He was so pissed and also hiding under a table.

 

As it turned out, there was not one, but _two_ sets of footsteps outside the door. Keith was just bad at judging things. They were footsteps that belonged to similar feet, wearing the same Western-style boots, and if he had to guess, one was female, but he didn’t guess off of foot-size alone. He guessed because when they opened the door and he saw them through the small strip of window where the tablecloth didn’t quite meet the ground, one of the voices was distinctly female. She had also said, “Someone’s here.”

 

Which was, you know, not good. Well, it was probably great for her, because Keith was the someone who was there, and he was about to make off with her diamonds, but since it was Keith who was narrating, it was Keith who decided it was not good.

 

He wondered briefly if this was how he was going to die. However, that was dumb and the answer was no, so he dismissed that thought.

 

There were many things he could summon, but most of those rituals were attention-grabbing and time-consuming. His ifriti, who didn’t even like him on a good day, was probably halfway across the country enjoying her 24-hour bone banquet and would definitely not be assed to help him again.

 

There was no subtle way of getting himself out of this mess, and it was just undignified to get caught hiding under a table, but the more he sat and thought, the closer the boots were to Keith. It was like watching the sand in an hourglass fall through - anxiety-inducing and unpleasant.

 

Resigned, Keith muttered “ _fuck subtle_ ” under his breath and loudly summoned two fire lizards.

* * *

 

“Someone’s here,” Allura said. It was an astute observation, clearly inferred from the fact that the room looked torn apart by someone who was really desperately looking for something.

 

Shiro nodded, absentmindedly picking a fork off the floor and putting it in the sink. No sense leaving that there.

 

“Here?” Coran asked quietly. “In this room?” There was weird smoke stuff gathering in his hands, and it took Shiro a few seconds to realise that it was a sword. He wasn’t sure how much a sword made of ghost dust was going to do against whatever bandit or squatter invaded the ship, but whatever. It looked kinda cool.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Well. Shit.

 

Immediately, Shiro looked up. It was ridiculous, but he almost expected something to be on the ceiling, looking down at them like a creature out a B-rated horror flick.

 

There wasn’t anything, but it never hurt to be sure.

 

Allura caught his attention with a frantic wave of her hand. He guessed they weren’t speaking now, because there was an unknown occupant in the room or whatever. She jerked her head at something behind Shiro.

 

He turned around and - oh. Of course. There weren’t many hiding places in a kitchen, and under the cloth of the dining table was a classic.

 

Nodding at each other, they slowly began advancing on the innocuously bleached-white twill. Even Coran, with his hazy ghost sword.

 

Then, a teenage boy burst from underneath the covers, screamed, kicked Shiro in the shin, and ran out the door. Sort of in that order. Shiro would have run after him, too, if the kid hadn’t left two giant flaming lizards where he was once hiding.

* * *

 

“Demons!” Allura yelled. “He summoned demons!”

 

Shiro was going to take her word for it. They didn’t look like demons, but hey. She was an immortal ancient princess, and he was some poor sucker who got abducted by aliens. If she said they were demons, they were demons.

 

“How do we get rid of them?” He asked, trying to keep the only metal part of his body between the rest of his helpless flesh and the giant snapping fire creatures. The temperature in the room had quickly skyrocketed to _unbearably hot_ , and the metal connecting his hand together was almost beginning to sear his flesh.

 

The giant fire lizards were easily the size of the average sleeping bag, or something of that size commonly available in the year 1872. They were also shedding sparks and embers with every step they took, the way crusted old mud came off hiking boots. That was fairly dangerous, and might actually burn down the ship.

 

“Summon something!” Allura yelled, hurling a dinner plate at one. It cracked against the thing’s skull (? if it had one?), and made it very angry and not injured at all.

 

“Summon what? How?” Shiro shot back, just as the second one lunged for him. He managed to get his metal hand in its jaw just in time, hitting the side of its face with his prosthetic with what he hoped was painful force. He figured if his body was going to be useless right now, it might as well be useless for someone else too.

 

Suddenly, his hand began beeping. More specifically, his hand sustained one very long and very high-pitched beep, like an error tone.

 

The effect was immediate. The two fire lizards cowered and retreated, a bit like dogs, and their weird reptile tales also did the little cat swish thing too.

 

Gasping, the three humanoids retreated as well to their own corner of the room. Shiro attempted to brandish his beeping hand out at the demons, because it looked dramatic and maybe pressed their advantage.

 

Coran turned to him immediately. “You have to summon something to banish it to the underworld. Something guardian-ish!” He shouted over Shiro’s hand. “Do you know the ritual for Cerberus? He would be perfect here!”

 

“I don’t know any rituals! Who’s Cerberus?” Shiro didn’t sign up for this.

 

Then, just as abruptly, the beeping stopped. Everyone in the room paused for a second.

 

The lizards began advancing again. If possible, the room got even hotter. They backed up further into their corner.

 

Desperately, Shiro yelled something along the lines of “please go back to hell!”

 

With a _pop_ that even _sounded_ startled, a small cat appeared between the two factions. Or rather, half a cat. The face half was more a crocodile’s, and the third half looked more like a hippo’s, but the biggest half was very definitely feline.

 

(Nobody in this scene, especially the author, is very good with math.)

 

It was the size of a household tabby, and it was licking itself with its crocodile tongue like a household tabby, but it appeared out of nowhere, unlike a household tabby.

 

Also unlike a household tabby, the second it looked up and saw the demons, it started growing in size.

 

It pounced on the one that had tried to eat Shiro’s hand- the slightly bigger one. Swiping with on manhole sized paw, it took out an eye and also part of the floor. Not to be outdone, the lizard demon barrelled into it, throwing its entire body at the cat creature. The creature crashed spectacularly with an old chair, and the chair lost.

 

Rising from the splinters, and also like, really pissed, the cat unhinged its massive alligator jaw and ran full-tilt at the demon. It would have collided and mauled the thing messily if it weren’t for the second lizard that made itself known by also throwing itself bodily in the cat creature’s path. The creature made do with the second demon, messily tearing it apart in ways that all three soldiers in the room cringed at.

 

While it was busy doing that, the other fire demon decided that if it was going to go down, it was going down swinging. It set its sights on Allura.

 

She was watching the fight worriedly, and therefore had the second’s warning Shiro’s shout gave her to dodge the larger fire demon.

 

She tucked and rolled to the side, coming up on one knee. The lizard, having misjudged where its prey was, spent a few seconds turning itself around. Second which Allura had time to call, “Coran!”

 

And seconds which Coran had time to throw his ghost’s sword to Allura. In her hands, the smoke blew away, and suddenly, as if finally figuring out a magic eye puzzle, Shiro’s brain made the switch and the sword wasn’t so insubstantial anymore. Gleaming and cold, it was a classic cutlass, without a hint of smoke in it.

 

Without wasting a second, Allura reared back with the cutlass and swung. The forward motion of the demon scuttling around the face her, coupled with the countering swing, neatly separated the thing’s head from its body.

 

So. That happened.

 

There were a few seconds where everyone just sort of stood there, frozen in their tableau. Then, the cat unfroze and neatly padded to Shiro’s side, proceeding to lick itself clean like a household tabby.

 

“You need to dismiss it,” Coran said frantically. Awkwardly, Shiro turned to look up at monster cat.

 

“Uh,” he said. “You’re dismissed?” The cat _popped_ , and suddenly there was nothing in the space it used to occupy, like before. Which seemed far too convenient, but it also didn't even rank in the top ten most confusing things to happen in the past  _ten minutes_ , so Shiro let it go.

 

“That boy,” Shiro turned back to the two Atlanteans, “was he a paladin?”

 

“Nah,” Coran said. “Any human sorceror worth their salt can summon a demon!”

 

“Oh,” said Shiro faintly. “That’s just great.”

 

Allura, still kneeling with her sword and gazing thoughtfully at the disintegrating demon corpses, suddenly spoke up.

 

“Did anyone see what the boy took?”

* * *

 

They could all be forgiven for not noticing the stove was on, because fighting giant fire lizards, then looking for things mysterious boys stole, both tended to cause things to slip from one’s mind. Coran only noticed because he was looking for cloth to wipe Allura’s sword off with. (The salamanders had bright blue blood, which was cool but also very disgusting. Nobody wanted to see that stuff clot or rot.)

 

“Princess,” He said quietly, directing her attention to the stove. Allura furrowed her eyebrows.

 

“Shiro?” She asked. “Did you leave the stove on?”

 

Shiro looked up. “What? No.” He went back to trying to pull out the ammit’s crocodile teeth from the woodwork.

 

“Huh.” Allura said. “Coran?”

 

“Yes, Princess?”

 

“Do you think this is the demon’s fault?” Allura asked, examining the flames.

 

He unceremoniously stuck his hand in the fire.

 

“Coran!” Allura protested.

 

“Nope, this fire is _not_ demonic in origin. Tickles, though!” He said, waggling his fingers in the flames.

 

“Please stop that,” Shiro said, because sometimes things just don’t look right, and this was one of them.

 

Allura rolled her eyes and blew out the fire.

* * *

 

“Good evening, Vincent,” Pidge said, rifling through her backpack. “Got anything for me? Anything weird go down?”

 

The bluecap flickered, settling itself on the top of her Erlenmeyer flask. _Things_ _most certainly did_ , it said.

 

_There’s a boy who stole diamonds from the tall woman and the man with the scar. The boy summoned two vulcanus, and the tall woman slew one with a sword, while the man with the scar summoned his own creature of the underworld to tear the vulcanus apart. The ghost found me and I was banished._

 

_I am sorry I cannot be of more help._

 

Pidge smiled. “No. That was exactly what I needed to hear.”

* * *

 

That morning, there was a girl standing on the dock right in front of their ship.

 

Some child prodigies were immediately identifiable on sight as gifted. They had the unmistakeable air of someone who knew what they were capable of, whether it was because adults told them, or they realised on their own.

 

This girl was a young genius.

 

She didn’t dress like much. She looked more like someone had taken the word bedraggled and turned it into a character design. Her shirt was two sizes too big, hanging untucked over sensible, if rough, pants. Her face and what little uncovered skin she had was streaked in soot and dirt, and her hair was mostly covered by a faded green scarf. It was pinned to her forehead by fingerprint-smudged bronze goggles, decorated with all sorts of small gears and details, and her cheap imitation leather boots had similar metalwork all over them. Wrapped around her left glove were brass-metal chains, similar to the ones hanging out of her pocket that _presumably_ attached to a pocket watch.

 

In short, she looked steampunk as hell.

 

“Good morning,” The little girl said. “Are you from Atlantis?”

 

Allura froze for a second. “No?” She said, and it was so unconvincing that Coran began to laugh behind her.

 

“There’s a ghost man following you,” She said, as if it was perfectly justifiable reasoning. Then, she stopped for a second and remembered something. Perhaps her manners. “My name is Pidge.”

 

There was a brief pause, where nobody did anything. It was the kind of unbearably awkward pause where everyone had something to say but nobody could manage to non-verbally communicate what order they were supposed to go in, and it just resulted in silence.

 

“Hi Pidge, I’m Shiro,” Shiro said at the same time that Allura asked, “Who are you?”

 

“I’m Pidge. I see ghosts,” She reiterated. “Specifically, that one.”

 

She pointed at Coran, who waved back.

 

“How did you know I’m from Atlantis?” Allura asked faintly, because sometimes faintly asking questions is the only response you can give to a smart kid.

 

“It wasn’t hard. Atlanteans were a peacekeeping race, capable of diplomacy and _universal translation_. You’re talking to me in Lebanese Arabic,” Pidge said, almost looking bored.

 

“Oh,” said Allura, faintly. It didn’t occur to her that her aura of linguistic universality could maybe be a tip off to her non-human heritage.

 

“Also,” Pidge said, holding out a palm. A little blue flame flickered in it for a bit before vanishing. “I asked a bluecap to spy on you. Amoral, sure, but turns out it was for the best. I think we can work out a deal.”

 

“We can?” Shiro asked, once he was finished processing everything Pidge said and realised she was done talking.

 

Pidge zeroed in on him. “You can summon things that shouldn’t exist, can’t you? So can I, and I’ll help you if you help me. I know what Voltron is. I know what happened to the lost city of Atlantis, and I have reason to believe the Galra took my father and brother from me.”

 

“How did you know-”

 

“It amazing what you can find in a library if you care enough to look. Your people left many records. I’ve read them all.”

 

“Pidge,” Shiro said, walking forward, “what exactly is this deal?”

 

“I’ll help you find the other paladins and defeat the Galra, if you help me find my family.”

 

Everyone was spared from answering that, because something suddenly exploded in the city proper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2\. [They did in 1883! It was actually a steam-engine hybrid that ran over the Brooklyn Bridge, made because engineers didn’t believe a regular steam locomotive could travel up an incline to get onto the bridge, so this dual steam/cable method was created. Nowadays, its mostly an SF thing.]  
>    
> 3\. [Have you ever wanted to know where the word "hoodlum" came from? 1870's San Francisco. If you know anything about this specific setting, the words ANTI-CHINESE RACISM would def. come to mind. Also, maybe if you know a bit more, LOTS OF WORKING CLASS IRISH IMMIGRATION would also come to mind! We're going to be Super Duper Honest now here, and I'm gonna tell y'all: The Irish Are Racists. Like… they're white. Most white ppl are racist. But, bc we're talking about hoodlums: they were roving gangs of working class Irish immigrants from the east coast who were between 12-30. They would go around beating ppl up, especially Chinese people. Where the word comes from? Differing accounts. According to one, a San Francisco newspaperman, trying to coin a term for a street gang led by some guy names Muldoon, reversed “Muldoon” and came up with “noodlum,” which was then misspelled by a printer as “hoodlum.” Another is that when young groups of miscreants were about to attack someone, they would call out, “Huddle ’em!” It could also be German. “Hodalump" is a German word meaning the same thing.]
> 
>  
> 
> Pidge is summoning a Bluecap - a sort of fairy. It helps miners out in return for honest wages, nothing more and nothing less. His name is Vincent because the lead singer for the Blue Caps’ name was Gene Vincent, and I think I'm funny
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Hanyang: Capital of Late Joseon Korea. It is now known as Seoul.
> 
>  
> 
>  Ifrit: Type of jinn, fire based, pretty cool. Jiniri: Female jinn
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> The things Keith summons to fight Allura-Shiro-Coran are vulcanus/salamanders. They’re fire elementals, and also not really at all like how i described. They’re vague european myth creatures, and i think they start w/ the romans. some asian countries like india and china were said to be capable of weaving fabric from their fire-proof skin (but it was really asbestos. the europeans were just easily impressed by small things lmao.)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> The thing Shiro summons is an ammit. it’s egyptian and devours the souls of the impure and i figured it’s close enough to being an underworld guardian to fit this role. my description is p much. the description. she’s lion-crocodile-hippo, btw, bc those are the three largest man eaters the egyptians knew of so like. yeah. thematic.


	4. Rejection Via Three-Legged Crow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Learning to use your powers under pressure is fun, kids! Don't try it at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is 21 pages long in google docs enjoy this 7k dump update
> 
> as always, comments are Extra Hecka Appreciated.

The thing about language is that it evolved as a method to describe the world around you. There is a word for grass because there was a need to describe the green shoots that came out of the ground. There is a word for green because there was a need to describe the colour of the stuff that stained clothes and grew off trees. There weren’t really words to describe whatever the fuck was standing over part of north San Francisco. Renowned author H.P. Lovecraft got close at one point. Close as in, incomprehensibly alien, slightly tentacled, and really fucking tall.

 

Before Lance even processed that there was a gigantic monster standing over the ruins of what was once a perfectly serviceable colonial storefront, the smell hit him. It reeked of the dead, the kind of smell so thick you swore it had color. Hunk threw up behind him, and honestly, Lance wasn’t far from joining him.

 

It wasn’t like he’d never seen a dead body before. For fuck’s sake, he’d grown up in the middle of a revolution. It wasn’t, it wasn’t like he didn’t know that people  _ died _ . It was just-

 

It was too close. It was too real. Everything in the past few days had had a dreamlike quality to it, like maybe he would get up one morning and remember that he didn’t  _ really _ see Keith talk to an alien, he just daydreamed it because he was bored. This wasn’t a daydream.

 

“Lance,” Hunk said behind him in the kind of hushed and terrified voice you got when you really didn’t want to draw any attention to yourself. “What do we do?”

 

Lance really wished he could answer that. Too bad he was busy having a bit of a breakdown.

 

The creature was at least thirty feet tall, casting its own shadow on the ground. It was metal and spikes and the same shade of grey-purple metal as the castle menacingly hovering to the south. Despite all the dull shine to its surface, it looked like it could pass for something that had been organic in origin. There were bits of something that could pass for flesh exposed through the flanks of metal armor, chinks of glowing purple light spilling out from between. It was holding a staff, the same metal as before, and hovering in it with an obligatory hum was a glowing orb of light. As the two boys watched, it reared back and swung the staff at another building.

 

The orb tore through City Lights Bookstore with a grace more like a wrecking ball and not an extraterrestrial ball of light. It was destructive, loud, and inefficient. Lance sunk down further behind the dumpster they were cowering behind and shut his eyes and prayed.

 

There wasn’t anybody inside that store. Lance clung to the fact like it was the only thing he knew. There wasn’t anybody inside, they were all safe for the moment, and if someone out there could maybe ensure it would stay this way, that would be gr-

 

Something was sniffing his hair. Holy shit, something was sniffing his hair. Lance’s eyes snapped open and he almost screamed in a very undignified manner when he locked eyes with a…  _ something _ . It had six legs, looked sort of like a super slimy seaweed insect that got too large, and Hunk was behind it with as wide eyes as he so Lance felt a little more solidarity in his freaked-outedness.

 

“Holy shit,” he said.

 

“Holy shit,” Hunk agreed.

 

“RAAAAAAAUUURRRHGHHHH,” said the monster in the background.

* * *

 

Oh god. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

 

It started in the north. It came all so fast. Nobody knew what it was at first. An arrhythmic thud of splintering wood, the reverberating din of collapsing foundation, the deep, jarring, in-your-bones resonance of something larger than nature ever intended walking towards you. It cannot be stopped.

 

It should have been stopped. Keith should have stopped it. It was his  _ job _ to know about these things before they happened. It was his job, and he failed, and he failed so spectacularly and utterly that the two hundred thousand people of San Francisco were going to pay for his mistakes.

 

The weapon was going to forge forward, no matter what. Nothing was going to stop it. Keith didn’t even know where it was  _ supposed  _ to stop. Was it just San Francisco that was sentenced to execution? Would the weapon raze the entire seaboard? What were the Galra planning?

 

The Atlanteans were all dead and gone. Voltron didn’t have a chance of rising, not with him firmly in the Galra ranks. They had no opposition. They expect no opposition.

 

They clearly didn’t know humanity all that well. San Francisco saw its death sentence handed down from above and decided that if they were going down, they were taking everything down with them. They decided that they weren’t dying today.

 

Humans lived. It’s what they did. As a species, relentlessly survivalistic, hardwired to sacrifice for ensured continuity with utilitarian ruthlessness. He watched as people risked running into wreckage and pulled out strangers. He watched as they scurried around, disorganised and screaming and chaotic and  _ human _ .

 

“Get the children-”

“-out of the houses-”

“-she needs a doctor!”

“Help us!”

 

He smelled smoke, thick and hazy in the air. The Galra didn’t like to burn cities. It was a waste of resources - this fire was human in origin.

Keith watched as men and women took torches to a street, burning a misshapen ring of flame around the monster. He could have told them it wouldn’t work, that the metal hammered to the thing’s skin was seven inches too thick to hit a single nerve ending, but instead, he was watching from ground zero.

 

They lied, the older soldiers. The rush of blood in his ears did nothing to dull the screams from around, the cries of babies ( _ babies? _ jesus  _ christ _ .), the shrieks of mothers and the howls of daughters and the cacophony of human defiance in the face of disaster. It was so loud it felt as if the noise was driving a spike clear through his skull. Like it was crushing him on all sides.

 

_ Focus, Keith. Think things through, for once. _

 

The line between the world outside and the thoughts in Keith’s head had become so blurred, he almost thought his father was really right next to him, reciting those words in his go to admonishment.

 

He wasn’t. Keith was alone.

 

Keith was alone, at ground zero of the Galra invasion.  _ Think things through _ . Why wasn’t he told about this? Why was he still in the city, wandering around? The Galra had ten thousand years to plan this invasion - why leave loose ends now?

 

_ They didn’t _ .

 

Oh.

 

Keith was a tool to gain access to the city and to prevent Voltron from ever forming but now - now, if San Francisco fell, North America would fall soon after, and without an entire continent, the world would crumble fast. Nobody, not even Voltron, would be able to stop the Galra then.

 

Keith had finally outlived his usefulness.

* * *

 

There was probably an event somewhere in Lance's life that lead to him hiding in an alleyway behind a monster the color of flaky blood, watching a much larger monster the color of dull metal tear through an entire city.

 

Something had to account for all the  _ weird _ . There had to be a reason Lance was stuck in these situations.

 

"What the fuck is  _ that _ ," Hunk whispered.

 

" _Bukavac_ ," Lance's mind supplied, and  _ holy shit _ , he didn't even know he could pronounce that word. The bukavac turned to face him, or at least that's what Lance assumed. The thing didn't really have any eyes, but there was an end to its crescent shaped body that had two gnarled roots pointing up like horns, and something that looked like a jaw with very sharp teeth, and it was facing Lance. Now that he was looking, it did seem sort of streamlined. As tough-looking and spiky as the thing was, it wouldn't do horribly in the water.

 

Then, the much larger, more dangerous monster lurched and crashed its wrecking ball into the building next to them all and Lance screamed and-

 

They weren't dead.

 

Scrambling to his feet, he looked around him. The monster moved on, leaving behind the crumbled remains of the houses to either side of them and the wood, wickedly splintered into deadly stakes, should have skewered them but instead, it lay on the ground behind the bukavac.

 

"Hunk. Hunk, get up, we're alive!"

 

"What?" Hunk performed a quick pat down of himself. "Holy shit!"

 

"It saved us," Lance said, turning to the bukavac. "Thank you." 

 

Hey, his mother taught him some manners.

* * *

 

Chaos came to the docks in waves. The first was the immediate aftermath of the explosion, the scrambling " _what was that"_ , the fearful unknown. Then came messengers, dockworkers taking leave in the city, running back with information and refugees in tow. The virus-like spread of the knowledge that "the city is under attack, take the citizens and go", the scrambling urge to pack as many people onto ships to safety as possible, the turmoil of masses of people trying to get something done with no organisation. It was desperate, furious motion, and in fifteen minutes, there was only one ship left on the pier.

 

By then, the four inhabitants had made it to ground zero, the center of the devastation. It wasn't hard to follow the trail of destruction. It was like a flat board sweeping over the city, leaving crumbling ruins of houses in its wake. 

 

The closer they got, the thicker the smell of death pervaded. It was the smell of blood and sweat and shit and fear and it burrowed into every corner of the city. Shiro once thought all the water in the heavens would not scrub the smell of fish from the markets - it turned out all that was needed was a massacre.

 

"Holy shit," said Pidge, stumbling to a stop. Shiro felt a brief pang of regret for her- she looked hardly fourteen, and no fourteen year old ever signed up for this. It was a scene straight out of the most bizarre nightmares, a monster towering over the largest buildings in San Francisco systematically destroying each building in front of it. It moved at a shambling pace, almost lazily flicking its staff at each building and watching the orb swing around to crash through glass and wood like it was paper.

 

Then, the monster turned and Shiro felt himself stop too. He couldn't stop, he shouldn't stop and yet.

 

_ He knew those eyes _ .

 

Suddenly, Matt Holt's screams joined everyone else's, and behind his eyes, Shiro relived a year's worth of memories in the span of a few seconds. His nose burned along the scar, like strong fingers were digging into the bridge where it was caved in, and his fake arm burned with pain so white he couldn't tell if it was hot or cold.

 

Matt's eyes were in front of his again and he stumbled out an "I'm sorry," I'm sorry for attacking you (did you know?) I'm sorry for leaving you behind (are you alive?) I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry

 

"Matt, I'm sorry," he said as Matt's face resolved itself back into a stranger's and Pidge's features won out over his memories. She looked at him with something in her face Shiro couldn't identify, and then looked back to Allura.

 

Allura. _Allura_ , shit, he forgot, he can't do this here, something's attacking. Abruptly, he felt her hands on his arms, almost painfully grabbing him and holding him in place. "Breathe with me," she said, commanding and princess like, and he did.

 

The world filtered back in. The colors shifted back from black-grey-purple to the browns of the town, and the smell was still blood-smoke-death but there was the hint of San Francisco in it again, the sea air filtering back in. He was here. That was there.

 

"Are you okay?" Allura asked, leaning in. Shiro took one last breath and nodded, and together they stood back up. Shiro hadn't even noticed that he fell to his knees.

 

"What's the plan?" he asks instead of dwelling because emotional repression is the name of the game.

 

Coran pipes up from where he was silently observing. "It's too strong for just you two to deal with. We know the other three paladins are in the city, and Allura should be able to sense them."

 

Allura nodded. "You and Pidge, distract the monster with everything you have. Make it flashy and loud - we need a flexible meeting place visible from all points in the city. Coran and I will cast a spell and hopefully draw the paladins here."

 

Spells. Okay. Not weird enough to spend time thinking about. While they had been talking, the monster had managed to get down another street, and it didn't show any signs of planning on stopping.

 

"Pidge," he said, grabbing her attention. "Let's go."

* * *

 

The funny thing about fearing for your life is that it only really takes up the forefront of your mind for a few minutes. The brain gets bored of it after a while. Seriously. It's a wonder humanity has survived as long as it has.

 

So sure, Hunk was still utterly terrified. It was taking up about 60% of his current thoughts. Just not the surface ones, the ones that really mattered. Right now? They were just playing a waiting game. They were trapped in an alleyway between two houses, and the monster was just a street away, and they couldn't risk running away until they knew it wouldn't turn around and squash them underfoot.

 

"I think I figured it out," Lance said abruptly. "It has a pattern."

 

"What?" Hunk said, straightening up from his slouch against the  _ bukavac _ 's back. It made a small ' _ mrp _ ' noise, which, weird.

 

"Look," Lance said, pulling Hunk in close and extending his finger out. Hunk looked and if he squinted, he-

 

Oh. There was a girl, sitting in the ruins of one of the houses not five feet away from the monster. Her right arm was hanging wrong and her left was curled around her clutching it to her side, and she was trapped in an iron maiden of glass shards and metal fence and she looked absolutely terrified.

 

The monster wasn't looking at her.

 

"We're not the goal," Lance whispered with all the excitement of solving a particularly hard riddle. "Destroying the houses-  _ that's  _ the goal! We're just collateral."

 

Then, the dumb beanpole  _ tugged him forward _ . "Lance, Lance, Lance, no -oh god- no this is a  _ bad idea _ -"

 

But did anyone ever listen to Hunk? No. Never. The greatest tragedy of his life. Here they were, running  _ toward _ a giant destructive monster.

 

God, even the stupid thing Lance called down was running with them. Nobody was on the side of reason, it seemed.

 

As they neared the girl, Hunk started to slow down a bit. Something seemed off.

 

Unperturbed, Lance ran forward, picking his way through the wreckage of the young girl's house. "Lance," Hunk called out in warning. The girl still didn't say anything, watching them with sad eyes.

 

"Hunk, come on, help me get her out!" Lance called over his shoulder.

 

"Lance, she's see-through."

 

Lance stopped abruptly. "What?" He asked, furrowing his brows and looking back incredulously. "Did you hit your head? You okay, buddy?"

 

Hunk took a step forward. "Lance, look at her," and yep, he could see the outline of the still intact kitchen table behind her, "she's not alive."

 

Lance looked disbelievingly back at the girl. She met his eyes, then smiled sadly and slowly moved her left arm.

 

Right at her stomach, in sharp contrast to the white dress she was in, was the telltale brown-red of old blood.

 

Lance stumbled back.

 

"Oh."

 

Hunk grabbed and steadied him, struggling to keep the guy from fainting or something. "Hey, hey, come on," he said, then jerked his head to the  _ bukavac _ . It clicked a little, maybe understanding exactly what Hunk intended to do with it. Glaring as sternly as he could manage, Hunk half dragged Lance to the thing's back and unceremoniously dumped the guy on the  _ bukavac _ 's back. It wasn't too spiky, they'd both be fine.

 

If the thing had eyes, Hunk was sure it was glaring back at him. He ignored it and turned to the girl and leaned down.

 

"Can you talk?"

 

She nodded, then paused. "Yes," she said, and it was quiet.

 

"Can you move on?"

 

She shook her head, then paused. "No."

 

Well. That didn’t make it easier.

 

“I’m gonna hold your hand, okay?” Hunk said, because that seemed like the thing to do. The girl nodded.

 

They all stood around unsure for a second before the  _ boom _ of the monster destroying yet another house made them all flinch, ghost girl included. Hunk hurriedly grabbed her hand, squeezed his eyes shut, and hoped that maybe it would work.

 

Something warm touched his skin the way only light ever did. Cautiously, Hunk peeked up and almost screamed. 

* * *

A crow was staring at them. It had three legs. It glowed slightly. One would think that wouldn’t work, being, you know, and tar-black crow and all, but no. Light was spilling out of it, like a really dark colored paper lantern.

 

Lance was starting to feel like he hit his head and forgot about it.

 

The crow cocked its head, regarded Lance for a few seconds, then turned immediately back to Hunk. He wasn’t sure if he was justified in feeling stung, but hey, rejection via weird three-legged crow  _ hurt _ . At least he’s always have his bukavac.

 

As Lance reflected on the pain of being rejected by something that didn’t exist a minute ago, Hunk reached out a trembling finger and, Disney-princess style, the crow hopped off the debris strewn ground onto his hand. They stared at each other. 

 

It was actually becoming sort of intense and Lance felt a little weird being in that moment, like an extra in a movie scene that really wasn’t supposed to be there. He and the ghost girl exchanged stares of uncomfortable solidarity. In the background, the monster kept destroying stuff at its unpredictable pace, arrhythmic booms of brickwork foundation going up in smoke. His bukavac yelped each time, which made Lance feel just a bit better about being terrified.

 

“ _ Yatagarasu _ ,” Hunk whispered after an eternity. The word didn’t mean shit to Lance, but okay.

 

The crow abruptly screeched and whirled on the young girl, and if it were possible, the girl would have paled. Lance didn’t blame here. Thing glowed from within, and it was terrifying.

 

It hopped off Hunk’s extended finger, and  _ stalked _ to the ghost. There wasn’t really another word for it. The glowing bird’s gait was graceful and rolled like waves, which didn’t seem like it would work, odd number of legs and all. It was admirable how smooth the weird little thing could be.

 

It stopped a few inches in front of the girl, and looked up at her. Then, with an actually temporarily blinding flash of light, the two disappeared.

 

Lance blinked the afterimages out from behind his eyelids and turned to look at the slightly-less-stunned Hunk.

 

“That was anticlimactic,” he said.

 

“Lance,” said Hunk, looking real freaked out. “Lance, the bird spoke to me.”

 

“Uh, Hunk? I was right there. It didn’t talk.”

 

“No, no, not talk-speak.  _ Mind _ speak. It spoke in my head.”

 

Hunk’s eyes were wide in what Lance hoped was the terrified and scared way, and not the “I’ve actually lost my mind in the wake of a horrifying attack” way.

 

“Hunk,” Lance said, grabbing the guy’s shoulders. Maybe it would ground him? “That’s not normal.”

 

“Lance you,” Hunk gestured with the frantic emphaticness that came from not having the words to emphasise, and instead being forced to make do with hand gestures. “ _ summoned _ that thing! That’s not normal either!”

 

“Bessie didn’t talk to me!” Lance cried in response, glancing back at the bukavac. The bukavac, now named Bessie, solemnly nodded to him. At least someone was backing him up here.

 

Then, he looked further behind Bessie. And saw an army of three legged crows, staring patiently at the kid who summoned them.

 

“Uh, Hunk? We have a bigger problem.”

* * *

 

Allura absolutely hated her skirt. Obeying the traditional gender roles of the host country was good and all, but  _ God _ , a monster was attacking uptown San Francisco. She needed to run.

 

"Coran," she huffed, "do you remember the boy from before? The one who attacked us?"

 

"Yes," he said, floating alongside her with ease. Allura kind of hated that.

 

"I think he's the red paladin. We need to find him."

* * *

 

It’s the messiest thing he’s ever done, but somehow, Shiro got himself an army of zombies.

 

He doesn’t really want to think about who the zombies were before. It less than ideal, ethics-wise, and thinking too hard about it just made him feel more unclean than usual, but anyways, it didn’t even really matter too much what his opinion of using suspiciously fresh corpses to fight was. There was no time to think.

 

There was a sharp crackle and yet another flare of bright green energy, this time fireworking across the immediate vicinity of sky to crater into the road immediately in front of him. The tendrils of whatever dissipated into the ground, and something suitably woody came running out of the cracks, running headlong into the fray.

 

_ The fray _ currently consisted solely of Shiro’s clumsily reanimated corpses throwing themselves at the ankles and feet of the rampaging monster, only to occasionally get crushed by the staff when the thing deemed to notice them. They were awkward, shambling fresh-dead, and the only real plus was that Shiro just gave them one directive and then could leave them alone. Still, it was something. It let him concentrate.

 

As a child, he loved stories. As he got older, he thought them silly distractions.

 

Now, his life depended on them.

 

Allura had told him, either two days or a lifetime ago, that he was the black paladin. Everything dark and dead, the blackest things people told each other in their stories, those were his. They listened to him. And Shiro knew exactly who he wanted to talk to.

 

Trouble was, they weren’t picking up.

 

Pidge knelt down suddenly, slamming her palms down onto the torn up street. Little geometric bursts of green came out, connecting into circles and expanding, over and over again. Shiro caught the murmur of “ _ ajatar” _ , over and over again, each repetition making the green glow just a little brighter. Then, with a flick of her wrists, she hurled the two circles down the street like disks.

 

Mid-flight, they spat out twin serpents, red and demonic and angry. Without skipping a beat or even checking on them, Pidge moved again to yet another summoning. She was machinelike in how she moved, pulling tricks out of her bag as fast as she could get it open.

 

Watching her, Shiro got an idea. He knelt down, similarly, and started a conversation.

 

Like every conversation, it began with calling someone’s name.

 

“ _ Gashadokuro _ ,” he called, ignoring every warning he ever got as a child. “Gashadokuro.”

 

It wasn’t like the zombies. Shiro just thought about it, and the zombies happened. This was a real story though, something with a mythos behind it. There was a power that came with naming it.

 

How did the legend go?

 

It was a skeleton, fifteen times the size of a man. It was hungry, forever, because it was built from bones of those who died starved. You would never see it coming, but it announced itself with the ringing of the bells, entirely in your head.

 

There was a ringing of bells.

 

Shiro’s eyes opened and he immediately looked directly into the bare grin on a skull.

 

It straightened up into its fifteen times man hungry forever glory, bones of those who died starved. It straightened up, and looked at Shiro in askance.

 

“Please,” said Shiro.

 

“Yes,” said the Gashadokuro.

* * *

 

“You see it too, right?”

 

Lance nodded. It was sort of a dumb question. He was staring in such wide-eyes shock that there was a ring of white entirely around his pupils. 

 

There was a really giant skeleton that wasn’t there before. There was an army of birds that banished dead people ghosts that wasn’t there before. There was a fucking slime-cow-with-six-legs that Lance named Bessie that wasn’t there before.

 

Hunk really wished he could go back to the before.

 

“Hunk, you know what this means?”

 

“What?” He knew what Lance meant. “No, no, no. Don’t do it.”

 

“We have to!” Noble idiot. “That thing is going to destroy our city!”

 

“Let it!”

 

“Hunk,  _ you live here _ .”

 

“I live! In general! I want to keep it that way!”

 

Lance was already running. Hunk cursed and ran after him.

* * *

 

It was like a goddamn homing beacon. If Keith didn’t know the Black Paladin was in this city, he knew now.

 

It was one of the people from the ship. He didn’t stick around long enough to know exactly what killed his  _ vulcanus _ , but the aftertaste of their deaths stunk of black magic. Was it the man or the woman? Did he even care?

 

He shouldn’t. He should be getting the hell out of there. He had to stay alive, maybe find the Blade of Marmora somehow, get past this and continue. The Black Paladin was fighting a losing battle, and Keith had no intention of sticking around to watch the fallout. Keith was going to fucking run-

 

That was Lance. He just saw Lance from the street across him. That was Lance and Hunk, and they were running.

 

Running towards the massive eldritch monster.

 

They were such fucking idiots - and they were being followed by mythic creatures.

 

Keith turned around and cursed the universe.

* * *

 

They weren’t going to keep this up for long.

 

Yeah okay, Pidge could concede that the giant skeleton was really cool, but it wasn’t very useful. It was impervious to all blows, with, useful, but it was also a skeleton. It couldn’t hit with much force, and it was too thin to block anything. They needed something big, soon. Trouble was, there wasn’t anything they could summon alone that would do it.

 

Then a six-legged sea monster burst through Shiro’s skeleton’s legs and fucking  _ screeched _ before tackling the monster by its ankles.

 

By screech, Pidge meant  _ screech _ . Blood-curdling, decently long, and pitched far too high to be comfortable for anyone. It was awful.

 

“Bessie!” Someone screamed. Pidge tore her eyes away from the valiant but far tinier monster to check.

 

Two boys had run up between the skeleton’s legs, both suitably out of breath and tired. One had yelled, and the other was surrounded by glowing birds.

 

They made eye contact between the legs of giant mythical beings, and suddenly, with a yanking sensation in her chest, Pidge  _ saw shit _ .

* * *

 

“You saw that too, right!”

 

_ “Is that a lion _ ?”

 

“What was that?”

 

“I have a plan!”

 

There was the horrifying feeling of thoughts in Lance’s head that  _ were not Lance’s thoughts _ , a kind of intrusive voice in his head yelling things into his ear. It took him a second to place the voices.

 

Also, he was fifteen feet up in the air.

 

The world was enshrined in a sort of blue haze, darker and lighter in some places. Lance thought he was stuck on the inside of something, but he couldn’t tell what.

 

_ A lion. Voltron. _

 

Right. The images. Wait. The monster.

 

Figuring things out could wait.

 

Standing on the ground, looking up at the beast was terrifying. Looking at it at eye level was just horrifying. Mismatched eyes glared out at Lance from behind a metal mask that seemed almost  _ nailed _ onto its face, slit and spiked all along its jaw. Crackling lines of energy, an unnatural purple, seemed to attach its head to its wide metal shoulders.

 

Wires jutted out of its shoulders and fed into a pack on the creature's back, and through his terror, Lance wondered what would happen if he hit it. Would it stop? Power down? Was it just decorative? There wasn't any time to keep wondering, because someone was shouting in his head.

 

_ "Get it away from the city! Back to the docks!"  _ said The Voice, which was wholly and utterly unfamiliar to Lance. It was good advice though, so he decided to follow it.

 

_ Go forward, _ he thought. Forward he went.

 

Apparently this weird lion thing listened to him. Well, at least that was a modicum of control over the situation.

 

_ "What the hell?" _

 

That was Hunk.

 

"Hunk!" Lance yelled, head swiveling around. Where was he? He could barely see anything through the haze but the creature's face, focused on something in the distance to Lance's left.

 

"Hunk, are you there?" Lance shouted.

 

_ "Lance?" _ That was definitely Hunk's voice.

 

_ "We don't have time for this! Clear the civilians, _ " someone new shouted. Lance's head was getting way too full.

 

He didn't have time to further reflect. Something hit him - the monster's purple orb.

 

He went spinning, head over heels, uncontrollable. Nothing would move - not his arms, legs, or heart. The panic came back full force.

 

_ Stop! Stop! Get up! _

 

He felt the shudder of breaking houses as his lion plowed through rows of them, a thin line of destruction, made that much messier by limbs flailing everywhere. In a move that, if it was executed with less frantic scrabbling, could have been called graceful, he managed to right himself. In the back of his head, he heard a hiss.

 

Great. Now the cat was talking to him too.

 

He was further from the action now, a spectator. From the distance, he could now clearly make out three other shapes, conveniently color-coded. Lance figured that if he wasn't so busy blinking the dust out of his eyes, he would be able to tell that they were lions. For now though, they were large translucent blobs.

 

He watched as the green one flung itself at the monster, only to get bashed off with the orb the same way he had. It righted itself mid air and landed back next to the black lion. Meanwhile, Lance's bukavac was raining down hell on the thing's ankles. He felt a surge of pride.

 

_ "Everyone, regroup!" _ It was the voice again. Was it one of the other lions?

 

Lance felt his lion get up and start  _ bounding _ over to the others. It sprung over streets of destroyed town - they really did manage to push the thing to the docks - and stopped right in front of the black one.

 

_ "We can't get near it, _ " someone new chimed in. They sounded… young? Their voice was high-ish in tone, and also very worried.  _ "Its got too good of a defense!" _

 

_ "There's only one way to beat it,"  _ said the original voice.  _ "We need to form Voltron. _ "

 

"That thing we saw! In the visions!" Lance yelled on a hunch. Maybe the mystery voices heard him that way?

 

The black lion turned bodily in Lance's direction.  _ "We need the red paladin. There is someone in the city right now looking for them. Until then, we need to keep it distracted." _

 

_ "How!" _ Hunk's voice broke in.  _ "I didn't sign up for this!" _

 

_ "None of us did," _ the younger person said grimly.  _ "Just hurry and keep it away from the city. We have to protect those people." _

 

Lance suddenly had the dumbest idea.

 

"Guys, I'm gonna power kick that orb thing!"

 

His head was suddenly filled with loud protests from multiple sources, but whatever. Carpe diem.

 

_ Hit the orb _ , he urged his magic lion. He saw the world bounce up and down as his lion bounded forward with him suspended inside, before it pounced, legs first, and- 

 

Missed the fucking orb. Instead it hit his lion in the face, sending them both spinning. "Fuck!" He yelled eloquently, and felt it echo against everyone else's mind. It felt invasive and freaky and he was really sure he didn't like it.

 

He felt the cat doing - what was it cats did with their throats? Lance didn't spend enough time with cats. Whatever it was, his space lion was making a noise pointedly at him. Suddenly, he felt the flash of ill-defined images in the back of his head. The monster - it's face - it's pack- it's pack! The pack!

 

"Hit the monster in the pack on its back!" Lance yelled.

 

_ "How?" _ The younger voice said sarcastically.

 

_ "Lance, everytime we get close, either the orb hits us or the monster!" _ Hunk yelled.

 

_ "Yeah,  _ Lance." Lance didn't think he appreciated the sarcastic asshole knowing his name.  _ "We need a better strategy." _

 

_ "Like wha- ORB!" _

 

Everyone tumbled out of the way of the orb, scattering yet again. Except the black lion. Luckily, whoever that was wasn't hit.

 

_ "Shiro, we need to move!" _ Sarcasm-guy said.  _ "Shiro!" _

 

_ "Why isn't he responding?" _ Hunk asked, hovering behind the monster.

 

_ "He did this before! I don't know what's wrong," _ yelled the person Lance assumed must be in the green lion. They'd never sounded younger.

 

Suddenly, with a crackle, Lance heard the original person -Shiro- speak up.  _ "I recognise this monster from my time in Zarkon's prison. I know how to beat him!" _

 

Which was good, because Lance didn't know what those words meant. Prison? This guy was in prison?

 

Suddenly, both the black lion and Shiro charged forward at once, and Lance felt everything around him shift and vanish as four other people truly invaded his mind.

* * *

 

Alright, everyone here needs to appreciate exactly what the fuck this looked like to everyone around the scene of the fight. Because - holy shit. This looked weird.

 

Imagine a giant metal pod crash landing in your city. Now imagine it spitting out a monster that begins to stomp its way through the city, wielding technology that even in two hundred years wouldn't be reality. And then, as it continues on its reign of terror, glowing magic lions come to fight it. That would be weird enough if one remembered that these are color-coded and semi-transparent and contained teenagers and one man in his late twenties floating in the center, but then. Then they all merge together. They merge together and the people in the centre fucking disappear and so do the lions and it's just one gigantic man-thing with separately colored limbs facing off against a terrifying cyborg monstrosity.

 

Also, most likely, your home has been destroyed.

 

God, these poor people.

* * *

 

"Allura, look! Look up!" Coran yelled, frantically tapping her shoulder.

 

"Coran, not now, we need to find-"

 

" _ They formed Voltron. _ "

 

Allura stopped suddenly, eliciting glares from the crowd she had just been pushing her way through. "What?" She asked to what looked like thin air. "That's not possible."

 

But nope. Every single head in the crowd was craned toward the most powerful weapon on Earth, currently doing battle with Galra demons.

 

The red paladin found them. Allura's job was over. Now, she had to wait and watch.

 

She stood there as Voltron was hit one - two times. At some point, Coran found her hand and gripped it, grounding her. She was so powerless. There wasn't anything to do but watch, watch Voltron stand there and do nothing but put up a shield, and pray that these people wouldn't die today.

 

Distantly, as if through walls, she registered the world around her. The tense, grim buzz of people who may be about to die. The whispered half-words of Coran praying. The iron tang-smell of blood, mingling with the dusty air.

 

The faint metallic bloom that promised rain.

 

She watched, mute, as one last time, Voltron was hit with the orb. The shield fractured apart on impact, and somewhere, someone screamed.

 

And then, with abrupt finality, energy came streaming out of Voltron and killed the monster.

 

There was a pregnant pause, a stuttered stop to all noise as everyone held their breath. Was it over? Was it done?

 

It was not. The monster rose again, and Allura felt something closing in on her, hollowing her chest out or pressing down on it or something - something was happening. Her heart sank. There was no noise as the orb crashed down again, one, two, three times. It returned back to it's staff yet again, and Allura's knees shook. Voltron fell back with each blow, teetering closer and closer into the ocean.

 

The monster advanced for its killing blow, and the sounds of prayers started up again and then -

 

The red paladin's sword. Allura had seen it before, sharp and wicked ten thousand years ago, and sharp and wicked today. It was unceremoniously summoned, hilt deep into the monster's chest, before Voltron turned and slid the creature's body down into ocean. A massive wave rose from it, pushing back all the refugee ships.

 

Now, Allura hoped. Now it was over.

 

She was the first to break the silence, running as fast as she could to the docks.

* * *

 

Pidge wasn't sure how to describe de-Voltronising. The feeling didn't return to her body. Her  _ body  _ returned to her body. For the brief few minutes they had spent fighting, she hadn't been a corporeal person anymore. Just one of five consciousnesses, controlling the arm of a glowing man. It was terrifying, being so completely enmeshed with the others, not knowing anymore where she ended and someone else began.

 

There were honestly a few second she wasn't even sure if she was going to survive to be a person again. There were memories in her head now - a woman she'd never seen before smiling down at her, the inside of an unfamiliar ship's cabin, a forest with foreign foliage - that she hadn't had before. She wondered if anybody else got something of hers.

 

She coughed again, just because she could, and patted herself down.

 

"Pidge?" Shiro asked, concerned. "Are you okay?"

 

She shook her head. "Is it over?" she asked.

 

"It's over," someone else said, and Pidge refocused on him. He was tall and fat and dark and looked like he was going to throw up. She recognised his voice- he was the yellow one.

 

Shiro straightened up, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "I'm Shiro," he said, holding out his metal hand. "I guess if we just shared minds, we should know each other's names."

 

"Hunk," he said, taking it cautiously. "And that's- where's Lance?"

* * *

 

This was the second time this week Lance was chasing Keith. It was getting to be a habit. (He really hoped Keith threatening him when he found out wasn't going to be one though.)

 

Keith was moving  _ fast. _ Lance was struggling to keep up, and he was the one with longer legs, dammit! He was just way too good and navigating the wreckage.

 

"Keith!" Lance wheezed when he finally got close enough, "Wait up!"

 

Keith whirled around, then narrowed his eyes. "You!" he shouted, complete with stabby finger.

 

"Me," Lance confirmed. He gingerly picked his way through the splinter-heavy street to Keith.

 

"What do you  _ want? _ " Keith said in a tone that just barely missed 'whine', gesturing wildly.

 

"You're the red paladin," Lance said with zero subtlety or preamble. Keith froze.

 

"You can't tell anyone! Especially not the Atlantian-"

 

"Who? What the fuck? Keith, you need to come with us. You're- you're like me! And Hunk! And the green and black lions- Keith, you're like us!"

 

"I- I can't. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not a paladin."

 

"Keith," Lance said sternly, "I have no fucking idea what the hell your deal is, but you need to come with us because something tells me that's not the only monster here to destroy civilization, and the exposition visions we all got say that we need five paladins to make that weapon. Voltron. Whatever. Anyways, you're number five."

 

"Lance, I have to go."

 

"Well," Lance sighed, "I guess this is for the good of humanity." Then he punched Keith in the head.

* * *

 

Allura was running faster than she ever had in her life. She probably set a record, too. It could only have been half a mile to the crash site, but it felt so, so far away. Her feet were scratched and bleeding from running across torn apart wreckage, and she couldn't even feel it, and there was a goddamn lead weight crushing her chest, and  _ they had to be alive, they had to _ . Coran's expression mirrored hers.

 

When she turned the street and caught site of the only standing figures she'd seen in four minutes, she almost cried in relief.

 

"Shiro!" She called. He swiveled around immediately.

 

"Allura!" He called back, running towards her. The people near him followed.

 

"Allura, Coran," Pidge said. "Thank you for finding the red paladin."

 

Allura stopped. "We didn't find them. I thought you did?"

 

The young man Allura didn't know, presumably the yellow paladin, spoke up then. "No, I didn't even see his lion."

 

At that convenient moment, another young man came strolling in, dragging the unconscious thief from the ship by his armpits. "Hey Hunk, guess who was the red paladin!" He yelled over his shoulder before turning around to face them. "Oh. Strangers," he said, suddenly realising he wasn't alone with the yellow paladin. "This was not a good first impression."

 

"Is that Keith?" The yellow paladin asked incredulously.

 

"Yeah," said the blue one. "Who're they?"

 

"I'm Allura," Allura said because she was diplomatic. "And that is-"

 

"The thief from the ship. He was a paladin?" Shiro asked, looking at Allura in askance, as if he thought she would know what was going on. Allura was flattered but also just as confused as him.

 

"Well, I'm Pidge," said Pidge. She waved awkwardly from her position further away from the rest of the group. "The ghost is Coran."

 

"Lance," said the blue paladin. "He's a  _ ghost? _ "

 

"Yeah, you can tell because he's, you know, transparent?" Pidge said sarcastically, ignoring Coran's bright  _ 'yup!' _ .

 

"Pidge, don't be mean," Shiro broke in. "I'm sorry, this is a terrible introduction. I'm Shiro, the black paladin of Voltron. Well, you're all paladins of Voltron."

 

"Yeah, about that. What the fuck?" Lance asked.

 

"I think," Allura said, trying to stave off the beginnings of what might be a new headache, "we should sort this out elsewhere."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "two hundred thousand people" is a number courtesy of sfgenealogy.
> 
> Bukavac! It's a slavic monster that lives in lakes and pools. Its name comes from the word buka, meaning noise, because it would jump onto people with a yell and strangle them. There is a. reason i picked this as Lance's first summon. (dw someday he will Unleash The Kraken.) btw, shiro can summon its sister spirit, the drekavac.
> 
> Yagaterasu! The eponymous mythical creature. (i would make up some bullshit here abt why it's the title creature but tbh i just liked that line.) Three-legged crows are found in the mythology of all the Big Three East Asian countries but i specifically chose the Japanese ones bc in China and Korea, the three legged crow only symoblises the sun. In Japan, however, it was considered a sign of divine intervention (!), and guidance (!), which historically "cleaned up after great battles" (!!!). so, duh, i chose this for Hunk.
> 
> Ajatar! It's a Finnish demon who haunts the woods. She has some serpentine elements to her design, but looks nothing like what i described her as here. I'm just gonna claim that she was busy so she just sent some snake daughters to do Pidge's bidding.
> 
> Gashadokuro! I kinda,,,, already told u all u need to know abt him in the text. I love Japanese myth, it has SO MUCH to draw from. Anyways, other stuff: power of inivisibility and indestructibility, 15x taller than the average person, a living skeleton (amassed from the bones of those who died without being buried), drinks blood. Yeah. ur fave will never be this metal.
> 
> The Voltron lions are just the normal voltron lions, but more mystical than they already were.
> 
> (im sorry for constantly ending on cliffhangers i just. am like this as a person.)


	5. Destiny, or Some Crap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout and planning stages of The Reverse Invasion. AKA: people have relationships, and somehow conflicts just keep. doing that thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i s2g my aversion to conflict carried over into my writing. i had to go back and add three extra scenes because there were plot threads i /didn't/ address bc it involved CONFLICT
> 
> also i love writing keith and lance's interactions. it's an ensemble fic but. they are too much fun i want to pay more attention to them!!!

The ships landed, one by one, spilling people out onto the docks like punctured sandbags. It was a difficult battle, going upstream enough to shephard six people and one ghost onto the Voltron to talk in private, but somehow, they did it.

 

The dining hall on the Voltron was too cramped for so many people, uncomfortable and claustrophobic. Coran had to settle on sticking his face in through the wall, like a horrible stuffed head. Keith was plunked down in a chair, head lolling at a neck-crick-inducing angle. Hunk leaned against the wall next to him, ready to either restrain him or keep him from falling. Lance, in contrast, immediately and heavily took a seat at the foot of the table and leaned forward, back slumped. Across from him, Allura stood and regarded everyone.

 

“Shiro, shut the door,” she said, and Shiro, escorting Pidge in, nodded.

 

“Well,” said Lance, “that’s not ominous at all.” He wasn’t fearing for his life anymore, and his sarcasm had come back full-force.

 

Allura sighed. “Please. We have much to discuss.”

 

“Yeah,” Pidge said, “namely - what the fuck?”

 

Hunk pointed to her. “My thoughts exactly.”

 

“Listen, lady,” Pidge kept going. “I want answers. That’s it. I don’t want any bullshit secrets that you’re keeping for our own good or because you’re ashamed, or whatever  _ bullshit _ reason you’ve decided is your justification for keeping all of us in the dark! Where were you? What was that? What even is Voltron, and who are they?” She swept her arm out in Lance and Hunk’s direction.

 

“Hey!” Lance yelled, straightening up a little. “Who are  _ you _ ?”

 

“That’s exactly my point! I don’t know who the hell  _ any _ of these people are! What are we even doing together? Why did you bring us together?”

 

“Pidge,” Shiro tried to break in, “calm down.”

 

“No! What attacked us? Why were  _ we  _ chosen?”

 

“I really want to know that, actually,” Hunk said from his corner.

 

“Paladins, please!” Coran said from his wall. It was ineffective, generally because when people start shouting, nobody wants to listen to the mild-mannered plea to sit down.

 

“Silence!” Allura yelled. It  _ was  _ effective.

 

She took a deep breath. “Everyone, take a seat.”

 

Everyone took a seat. “Now,” she started, “I’m sure you all have questions. And you’re right - It isn’t fair to you that I won’t give you answers. But now is not the time. You want to know what that monster was? It was the first strike.” Allura looked around the table. None of these kids looked past eighteen. “I’m sorry, but we are at war now. None of you signed up for this. None of you  _ chose  _ this. But if you care,  _ at all _ , about the fate of your race, you have to listen to me.”

 

“Start from the beginning,” Shiro advised. Allura nodded.

 

It took a full thirteen minutes to get it all out. They asked more questions than Shiro did. Allura's throat was scratchy-dry, and she felt that bone-deep empty that came from talking for too long about a subject you'd never even mentioned out loud before. It was freeing, it was tiring, it was over. She didn't dare look in anyone's eyes. She was ruining lives here, condemning kids to a war they couldn't back out of.

 

It was a sacrifice. Five people fight, a billion and a half survive. It was cold, clear logistics, the kind her father always excelled at. Looking blankly at a person and impassionately screw them over.

 

_ They were chosen for a reason _ , she reminded herself. Worthy successors to a legacy. This was destiny, or some crap.

* * *

“Allura,” Shiro said, watching the paladins around the table. “I need to talk to you.”

 

She looked up from her perch on the kitchen counter. She had been staring at Keith, who had yet to wake up. The others had just recently fallen asleep, tired from stress and the day’s events, electing to discuss strategy in the morning.

 

“Sure,” she said. “Shoot.”

 

“No, somewhere private. Can we-?”

 

“My room,” she said decisively. “Let’s go.”

 

“Okay,” he said. “Coran too.”

 

Coran flickered in response and floated to his feet, joining them in filing out of the kitchen. It took two minutes to get to her room, but in those minutes, Shiro had already weighed every single pro and con of telling the truth and cycled between anxiety, terror, relief, and dread five times. The click of her door closing behind him made his decision for him.

 

“I’ve never been in here,” Shiro said first, because he was awkward and also a coward. The room wasn’t drastically different from his, but there were clothes lying about on her bed, and pictures on the walls. Personal touches. Also, Allura was a bit of a messy person.

 

“I’m pretty private,” Allura said in response, sitting down on her bed. Above her, on the wall, was a display floating in the air. It glowed faintly blue-green, displaying words in a language Shiro had never seen before - Atlantean, probably. There was a picture of the ghost king Shiro had seen before, Allura’s father, on the stand next to her bed. He was younger in it, holding what could only be Allura in his arms. Shiro found himself focusing on those details, unable to look her or Coran in the eyes.

 

“We spent a long time on our own,” Coran said, settling down in a chair opposite the door. A book in what was probably French lay open at his feet.

 

“Yeah, I guess,” Shiro said, looking down. “I- I need to tell you something abou”

 

There was a knock at the door, then Hunk’s panicked voice floated through. “Keith’s awake, guys!”

 

Allura looked and Shiro sharply before getting up to open the door. “We’ll discuss this later.”

* * *

The three missing members burst into the dining hall at once, only to be greeted with… a fairly calm scene. There was a chair that was upset between Pidge and Keith, and the obvious remnants of a brief squabble strewn about, but everyone was sitting down and looking expectantly at the doorway. As soon as Allura cleared it, Keith stood up.

 

“Are you the general of the Altean army?” he asked, hands clasped behind his back.

 

“Uh, sure.”

 

He bowed. “I, Keith Kogane, formally reject my association and rank in the Galran Armed Invasion Force, and request your mercy.”

 

“Yeah, okay,” Allura said. “I’m not too sure what that means.”

 

“Struck colours,” Coran spoke up. “We’re pirates,” he explained to Keith.

 

“Pirates?” Keith asked, furrowing his brow.

 

“Well, about twenty years ago. So, you want to abandon the Galra cause! We’re pretty good at not liking the Galran cause.”

 

“Hold on a second,” Lance butted in. “He was  _ literally _ just their spy! We’re gonna trust him, just like that?”

 

“They destroyed my home!” Keith yelled, breaking his perfect posture to whirl around and glare at him.

 

“Yeah? Mine too! And I don’t have a fucking floating castle to go back to!”

 

“Neither do I! They-” Keith broke off and looked away, glaring intently at the abandoned kettle on the stove. “They said they wouldn’t attack for another three years or so.”

 

“Oh, so  _ then _ it’s fine? News flash, asshole, in three years there’s still gonna be people in the city! Oh, but so long as  _ you  _ can leave,  _ then  _ it’s fine!”

 

“It would have been three more years to stop them!”

 

Shiro moved to break them apart, but Allura grabbed his hand. “Let them,” she said, not breaking her gaze. “They need to solve this themselves.”

 

“It might get violent,” Shiro protested.

 

“It won’t.”

 

“Oh  _ sure _ , you were going to  _ stop them _ . Real convenient, this double agent story-”

 

“It’s the fucking truth, asshole! I’m not on their side-”

 

“You’re Galra! You’re always on their side!”

 

Keith slammed his hand on the table. “I’m still a fucking human!”

 

Lance abruptly quietened. Keith was shaking.

 

“So,” Pidge broke into the silence, “let’s take a vote. Who believes Keith?”

 

She raised her hand. So did Allura, prompting Coran, Hunk, and Shiro. Then, slowly, without breaking eye contact with Keith, Lance raised his hand.

 

“Great!” Pidge rolled her eyes. “Now that  _ that’s  _ over,” she turned to Allura, “do we have a plan? Or, first priority, do we have a place to stay?”

 

Allura blinked, then shook herself out of it. “My ship can accommodate all of us for a while now. We need to figure out what the Galra will do next.”

Keith stumbled over to the knocked over chair and righted it, dropping himself into the seat. “They probably meant to destroy all of San Francisco in one fell swoop, but obviously they failed. And the Galra hate failure. They may try again, on a larger scale.”

 

“Okay, what does that mean?” Allura asked, beginning to pace. “Another monster?”

 

“No,” said Lance suddenly. Everyone turned to look at him. “Monsters don’t work now that they know we have Voltron. They won’t try anything like that - wait. Wait. What happens when you cram an entire city into half the space, and someone gets sick? A smallpox resurgence? Deadly.”

 

Allura looked to Keith. “Do the Galra have the ability to infect humans?”

 

“Not that I know, but it’s not out of the question.”

 

Shiro spoke up. “Yes.”

 

Everyone turned to look at him. He clenched his artificial hand. “Allura, I was going to tell you. I remember what happened. The Galra took me - they experimented on me. The witch-”

 

“Dainee Haggar?” Keith asked.

 

“Yeah, I think that was her name. Haggar. She touched my arm and, instantly it turned red. They infected me with  _ something _ , and my skin and muscle - it all peeled away in three hours.” Shiro unlatched the metal casing on his hand, revealing the skeleton underneath. “This is all that’s left.”

 

“Did you get blisters? Pain worse than befit the injury?” Hunk asked, leaning over the table.

 

Shiro blinked. “Yes.”

 

“It sounds like NF- necrotizing fasciitis. But that’s not contagious, and it doesn’t work that fast-”

 

Pidge broke in, staring at Shiro’s hand, “Unless it’s a strain of E.Coli necrotizing soft tissue, then it would be contagious and dangerous, but it doesn’t account for how fast it was-”

 

“How would E.Coli change to necrotize tissue though?” Hunk asked, frowning at Shiro’s hand.

 

Lance steamrolled over them. “It doesn’t matter how, it matters that they can. They want us afraid, right? An entire city vanishes, wiped off the map, and all they leave are skeletons? There’s a reason they picked San Francisco - we’re isolated. Nobody lives between here and the eastern seaboard - it’s all desert and field. We’ll be wiped out, but there’s not enough people for the infection to spread across the whole country - that’s why the virus works so fast! The Galra want the element of surprise! If it worked slow enough for ships to carry the infected to other countries, people would have an idea of what to expect, maybe even figure out how to counter it.”

 

“Oh god,” Hunk said, turning pale, “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

 

“Well, why not deploy it everywhere simultaneously?” Coran asked. “Why wait at all to conquer it?”

 

Hunk looked like he had tastes something bitter. “Resistance.  No matter how hard the Galra try, they can’t exterminate every single one of us. Somewhere out there, someone is going to be resistant to this virus.”

 

Coran put the dots together. “So long as there’s even a single human on this planet, it’s not theirs to claim according to Alfor’s rules!”

 

“They need to go city by city, and comb for survivors. If they make even one mistake, the planet dies and they lose,” Lance said. “So they won’t make mistakes.”

 

“Which means?” Pidge asked.

 

“It means we have time before San Francisco is hit. They’ll wait until we pull everyone from the rubble, until we have everything up and running, then hit us with everything they got,” Lance said, then gestured to Coran.

 

“Do you guys have paper? We need to draw up a timeline. How fast do you think they can get their doomsday disease up and running, Hunk?”

 

Coran obliged, paper rustling before being telepathically slammed onto the desk. Allura snatched the inkwell and quill before they could embed themselves in someone’s forehead, and gently placed them done by Lance. He immediately set to work.

 

“I’m not sure about the disease, but it might be why they’re abducting people. They took my father and brother,” Pidge said, leaning heavily on her arms. “That’s why I’m here.”

 

Shiro looked extremely, obviously pained, but everybody did him the courtesy of not shooting him looks. They were also a little busy here.

 

“They might be taking people from separate regions and ethnic groups, testing there.” Hunk said. “Some people are more resistant to things than other people.”

 

Coran hummed. “That might take a while - there’s quite a lot of you buggers! How long do you think they could possibly take to test them all?”

 

“A week if they’re being thorough - and it seems they need to be.”

 

“Okay,” Lance said, noting that down. “We have a week to stop them. What do we do?”

 

“Take down the castle,” Keith said immediately. “It’s their only base of operations, because they can’t have one on the planet, or they violate rule three.”

 

“How do we even get up there?” Hunk asked.

 

“Isn’t it obvious? Build a portal!” Coran said. “I  _ was _ the chief engineer of the Atlantean army once. The only problem would be finding a power source…”

 

“Okay, Coran. You and Pidge should work on building a portal.”

 

“Hunk’s a good engineer, by the way!” Lance volunteered. Hunk looked a little deer in headlights.

 

“Hunk, do you think you can figure out the power source problem?”

 

“I can,” Keith said. “The  _ kumiho _ .”

 

Shiro furrowed his brow. “Do you mean the  _ kitsune _ ?”

 

“No, it’s imperative you don’t summon the Japanese version. The kumiho, Hunk should be able to summon it, legend say if you catch the kumiho, you get its  _ yeowu guseul _ . It’s a source of power to the kumiho, according to some definitions.”

 

“Hunk and I will catch it, since he can summon it, and I think I have the most experience tracking and hunting.”

 

“Also, we need to destroy the castle somehow,” Keith reminded.

 

“Okay,” said Lance, “but how?”

 

“Bomb the shit out of it.”

* * *

Pidge bit her lip and fidgeted outside the doorway. The last 18 hours ( _ eighteen hours?!)  _ didn’t feel real at all, but sure enough, it was dark outside. The adrenaline had well and truly left her system, and the reality of the situation was setting in.

 

In London, sleeping in libraries and looking through occult and esoteric bookshops, it almost had felt like an adventure. There was the undercurrent of grief, sure, but it all seemed to fantastical and removed. A father and a brother who had been abducted by aliens, new powers over the bedtime stories her mother told her - it was like a fairy tale, the kind that came out of a leather-bound book from fifty years ago.

 

Fairy tales were nice. The evil queen always got her just desserts, the prince and princess left happy, and kingdom was peaceful again. Nobody fought wars, or slept on a street, or had to think about how half their family was gone and they just abandoned their mother just to get cold feet about talking to the one person who could maybe know where they are-

 

Fuck it.

 

Pidge squared her shoulders and about-faced, looking into the kitchen she had just left. Only Shiro, Allura, and Coran sat there now, everybody else shown to a room or, in Keith’s case, held in a room by Lance to be “safe”. They were seated at the table, drinking something out of dull metal cups, all the empty chairs between them poking out like snaggleteeth. Allura looked up.

 

“Pidge,” she said, softly. It was an acknowledgement, and Allura looked more tired than she’d ever seemed before.

 

“Allura,” Pidge returned. She took a hesitant step into the room, remembered her square shoulders, and completed the rest of the walk to the table with her false confidence intact. “I need to ask Shiro something.”

 

Shiro looked up, still cradling a cup of something that smelled like her mom’s cooking to his chest. Pidge watched a tendril of steam curl out of it. 

 

“Yeah?” He asked. His leader-voice was gone, something quieter and more tired in its place.

 

There was really no way to ease into this subject. “Did you know someone named Matt Holt?” She asked, still wincing internally at the brassy bluntness.

 

Shiro’s face went through a few micro-expressions Pidge consciously tried not to read into, before settling back into his brand of tired stoicism. “What do you want to know about him?”

 

“Is he alive?” She asked, all her intensity coming back into her demeanor. “Is he safe? Is his father safe?”

 

Shiro glanced at Coran. “I don’t- I don’t remember much of what happened to him. He and I, we were in the same detention center. His father was there too. We- they forced us to fight in these gladiator rings. I hit him, made it seem like I was bloodthirsty and made sure he would be sent to the general labor population.” He looked away for a while before continuing. Pidge didn’t speak.

 

“He and his father, they have a high chance of being alive. As far as I knew, they only experimented on the gladiators. But that’s no guarantee that your family will still be up there when we invade.”

 

Pidge jerked. “My family-”

 

“You have a bit of a resemblance,” Shiro said. He almost smiled.

 

Coran, seated to her left, smiled at her kindly. “The Galra have taken much from us, but they’ve never killed senselessly. You will see your family again.”

 

“Yeah,” she echoed, “I’ll see them again.”

* * *

Keith opened his door and came face to face with a ghost.

 

“Oh good!” He said, brightly and cheerfully, “May I come in?”

 

Keith blinked. “No.”

 

“Hell yeah, you can,” Lance called from inside the room. Coran took that as unanimous invitation and stepped around Keith, which he found ridiculous because the dude was a ghost. He, by definition, couldn’t step on any toes.

 

“What brings you here, ghost dude?” Lance asked, sprawled in a chair with his legs hanging over the arm. He looked a little pretzel-y.

 

“Oh, Lance, I just wanted to talk to your charge here for a moment, on behalf of Allura. You’re welcome to explore the ship, by the way. It may be your new home for a while.”

 

Keith jerked and stared at Lance. “Are you really going to  _ live on this ship _ just so you won’t let me out of your sight?”

 

Lance snorted, swinging his legs back to the place where legs go on a chair. “It’s not about you. I’m pretty sure the giant space monster wrecked my apartment. And my job. And your job. We don’t all have backup living options in a giant alien castle,” he added, with a masterfully unsubtle touch or belligerance.

 

“Lance, the kitchen is on your right. I think your friend Hunk mentioned wanting to try making something in there.”

 

“Niiiice,” Lance drawled and left Keith to the mercy of the ghost dude.

 

“Hi, Coran,” Keith said, remarkably civilly.

 

“Hello, Keith,” Coran returned. “I trust you know why I’m here.”

 

Keith’s face turned ‘sucking-on-a-lemon” pained. “Because I’ve… been here… before.”

 

“That’s a word for it,” Coran said. The gentle edge to his voice felt like a fucking weapon. “Do you know what you took here?”

 

Keith furrowed his brow. “Do you… not?”

 

He shook his head. “I’m afraid, my boy, you’ve had us quite stumped.”

 

“It was this- I don’t know these two little crystally things? They looked like diamonds.”

 

Coran’s face blanched. It had the curious effect of looking like someone threw a thin white cloth over the area his head occupied, bleaching the part of the wall still semi-translucent behind his head. “I must tell Allura immediately.”

 

He vanished through the floor, leaving Keith blinking in the dust. “Bye,” he said, belatedly.

* * *

 

If the market had been cramped before, it was a thousand times worse now that all of North San Francisco was shoved down and taking refuge in the south side. Less volume, same amount, more pressure. _ PV=nRT. _

 

Eventually, it was going to burst.

 

It was even worse with the sheer army of the dead, lingering in what would have been unoccupied shadows if there had been a square inch of the city that wasn’t occupied. They stared balefully at the shambling masses of living, and if they weren’t so pathetic, it would have almost been sinister. Even still, it was all too easy to see exactly how they died, with their caved in skulls and mangled legs and unnaturally clean skin. Pidge couldn’t figure out if she would rather have seen blood, or be grateful that it wasn’t there.

 

She avoided looking them in the eyes, which was easy enough. Many of them looked like nothing more than smoke, and very few had any color to them at all. They were hazy, and wind was enough to scatter them.

 

Pidge hiked up her skirts and forged through the swarms of people. She couldn’t even call it ‘swimming upstream’, because it seemed like every single person in San Francisco descended on the market this fine Saturday morning and they all had their own idea of where they were going. She was stuck elbowing and shoving her way through the crowd, stumbling against the hot asphalt.

 

Pidge hated crowds. Too much pushing and shoving and  _ touching _ . Every time someone bumped into her, she felt her irritation overtake her patience just a bit more. Of course, now that she thought that, someone had to bump into her hard enough to knock her into the ground. That’s just how the world worked.

 

She groaned and tried to scramble back to her feet, because  _ christ _ , the street may not be able to see the sun through all the shadows of people, but it sure could feel like it did. Someone’s foot stamped down on her hand before she could, and she  _ swore _ she could hear the flesh sizzle like meat on a stove.

 

“Seems we got a runner here,” someone over her drawled lazily, wrong side to be the one standing on her goddamn hand - god there’s more than one of them - ,”and you know what we do with your kind here?”

 

Her  _ kind _ ? What the fuck? There was the brief, irrational leap of logic that the Galra finally tracked her down (they were here to collect her like they did her brother and father, her mom would be alone), before her brain caught up with her paranoia. Why did the Galra sound Irish?

 

She twisted as well as she could, pinned down painfully by the hand, and squinted. Three boys(?) stood around her, and she couldn’t tell exactly how tall they were from the ground, but they were certainly taller than her. The sun hit them full in the face, illuminating their plain, monobrowed faces in glorious light.

 

Hoodlums.

 

“So, he’s the **_biggest toad in the puddle?_** ” Pidge asked unconcernedly, jerking her chin at the on in the middle. He probably wasn’t, but any cheap trick to sow dissent in the ranks would work well enough for her. “Really **_bricky_** of you, attacking a little girl!”

 

She could see them looking at each other nervously. Her British accent was definitely throwing them off. Yeah, she was an immigrant, but not the kind they didn’t like.

 

Hypocrites. The lot of them.

 

“He ‘aint,” one of them said, but he looked uncertain about it, “none of us are.” Score.

 

“Seems we just agree on somethin’ tho. There just ain’t enough city to go around, and  _ someone’s  _ gotta go,” the middle one went. Pidge swore his eyes flickered, so she kicked him in the shin. (A natural response to being faced with strange occurrences.)

 

He doubled down, possibly crying. Pidge wore steel capped boots, and it showed. The other two seemed torn between checking up on the guy and getting revenge on her. She didn’t let them finish deliberating.

 

Scrambling to her feet, she threw her elbow out and caught the tallest one in the neck. He stumbled back a little, just enough time for Pidge to swivel and punch the shorter one in the nose. There was a  _ crunch _ , which disgusted Pidge for a second before she consoled herself with the fact that he was a terrible person who deserved it. His hands immediately came up to cup his nose, so she couldn’t see if she drew blood or not. Aaaand, his eyes were definitely getting bigger. He dropped his hands, and she saw fangs. Freaky.

 

The middle one that Pidge kicked was getting back up, so she kicked him again. In the stomach. By this point, people had gathered around. Weren’t the police going to come soon? Were they too busy cleaning up the city after the attack? Pidge kneed the tall guy in the gut because he came too close to her.

 

She quickly retreated to the furthest edge of the ring of people surrounding them. Struck out when any of the boys got too close. Waited. Wasn’t anyone going to come? Their eyes were getting awfully big - irises blown wide and ringed, like the street dogs she’d watched.

 

“I got three bucks on the brown one,” someone said, and well. That’s it. This needs to stop.

 

They regrouped, straightening up slowly and in the kind of unison that only ever signaled bad things. The tallest one smiled, stretching his lips out further than they should have gone, and flashing the kind of tusk-fang combo rabid dogs showed. Pidge wasn’t a fucking idiot.

 

She thrust out her hands and zapped them with mind-magic.

 

It wasn’t exactly the same as summoning creatures. There was no call-and-response, no searching for a presence. The werewolves were just there, in her head, waiting for an order. Completely subservient.

 

She froze. It was a little unnerving. With the will-o-wisps and the ajatars and all the obviously non-humanoid creatures, she didn’t really have a problem, but these used to be people. Sick people, but people nonetheless. What did that mean? Controlling people,  _ using _ people for her own means.

 

She would have stood there, frozen in shock, if someone hadn’t grabbed her hand.

 

“Pidge, what did you do?”

 

Pidge wrested her hand out of his grip and glared up at Shiro. “They started it,” she says, and is suddenly aware of how  _ childish _ that made her sounds. She covers it up by wrinkling her nose.

 

“Yeah, yeah. Break it up,” he says, moving them back. The crowd is dispersing, popping the little air bubble of space they had. People begin brushing past them, flowing back in like a river unobstructed again. They are suddenly separated from the werewolves, who blinked out of the hypnosis like it had never happened.

 

They aren’t far enough to fully obscure what they yell back at Shiro. Pidge almost squared up again, to hit them with her fists this time, but he grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her away. “Not worth it,” he whispers to her, navigating her through the market skillfully. His metal hand is just slightly uncomfortably hot, but she doesn’t mind.

 

“Thanks,” she said, pulling her hands away and stuffing them in her pockets.

 

“No problem,” he smiles back, “but I hope that isn’t going to be a repeat occurrence.”

 

“Wouldn’t be if you just let me hit them again,” she muttered.

 

“How about we just send Lance instead?”

 

“What? Do you think I can’t handle myself or something? And Lance  _ can _ ?” Pidge said, stopping on a dime. “Fuck you!”

 

Shiro held up his hands in mock surrender. “It’s not that, Pidge. It’s dangerous now. There’s too many people cooped up in one town. Violence is an expected result.”

 

“It’s just as dangerous for Lance!”

 

“Lance isn’t as quick to fight someone.”

 

“Tell that to Keith, asshole!”

 

Shiro snorted. “They seem to be the exception to each other’s rules, Pidge.”

 

She looked away and grudgingly began walking with Shiro again. “How’s he gonna know what to get?” she said, for the sake of a token resistance. She knew that was a non issue anyways. She just wanted to be ornery.

 

“You can write him a list, can’t you?” Shiro said, raising his eyebrows.

 

“Ugh,” she said. “Fine.

 

With one last uncomfortable glance back at the kids, snarling and painted red, she followed him out of the marketplace.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Struck colours: When pirates surrender, they change their flag to white - they strike colours.
> 
> http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist110/MapUSPopulation1860.png here’s why they picked San Francisco (in case u wee curious abt the population density of America in the 1800’s?)
> 
> Also, when they were discussing the virus: One of the limitations I had in this fantasy world is that it’s still real world 1872, and Darwin’s theory of evolution came out about, like, maybe less than 15 years ago? It’s not a commonly accepted theory at the time, but obviously, for them to figure it out, it needs to be, you know, an idea in their minds? So. Hunk, who’s medical background is him reading TONS, metric FUCKTONS of medical books, is obviously not too much of a believer in it. Whereas Pidge, who has a background in chemistry and biochemistry, thinks with more… idk she believes in her own medical expertise more, so she’s more open to her own logical view of ~evolution~ - she’s also not an engineer shoving herself into a doctor’s model. (i know everyone’s #1 grip abt Smart People In Media is that they can do 5692 things outside their field but listen. none of these characters are university educated they’re just nerds who read things for fun. they’re not ACTUALLY specialised professionals in a bunch of unrelated fields.)
> 
> By the way, I checked, and NF was def a thing people knew about in the late 1800’s. Just in case… someone… actually cared about this.
> 
> kitsune/kumiho: i actually,,, don’t think i need to explain what a kitsune is. yall are reading voltron fic, there’s no way u werent a weeb at some point. the big dif between that and the kumiho was already explained in the fic.
> 
> the book from 50 years ago: Pidge is talking about the famous Grimm Brother’s Children’s and Household Tales, published 1812!
> 
> their plain, monobrowed faces in glorious light: European folklore stated that werewolves in human form could be identified by the “meeting of both eyebrows at the bridge of the nose, curved fingernails, low-set ears and a swinging stride”.
> 
> biggest toad in the puddle: American 19th century slang: most important person in the group
> 
> bricky: Victorian slang: brave, fearless
> 
> FINALLY: 4 every review a new puppy is born... think on that... brother.

**Author's Note:**

> send me prompts at dreampunk.tumblr.com!


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